


Cost of Living

by americanjedi



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A More Vicious Motivator, AU, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Gen, Grief Makes Us a Little Mad, Grief/Mourning, John Collects Hearts, Just Not Like That, Monster!John, Rated to be Safe, Strange Families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-20
Updated: 2012-06-25
Packaged: 2017-11-08 04:26:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/americanjedi/pseuds/americanjedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson's family has always been a little different. He never thought about it until Sherlock died. Now John is running through dreams collecting hearts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Cost of Living has been altered into an original story and will be published as part of a horror anthology on the 21st of October 2013. For more information go to thursdayplaid.tumblr.com.

"We're a different sort of thing," John's Gran said, her accent soft and musical, lilting. "But you must never go down that path. You can never go back once you make that choice."

He smiled up at her, a trusting child, looking into her eyes that are all dark, like old blood. Eyes that aren't human at all. She smoothed John's hair down over and over. She pressed a kiss to the side of his Grandda's head tenderly. It made him happy, it seemed like all the other kids at school had parents that are getting divorced; it was comforting to see married couples so much in love. He was terrified of his parent’s getting a divorce and tried to be extra good.

John's Grandda appeared 43 and would until John’s Gran died and stopped being able to feed him. She would not stop otherwise. Grandda Watson shivered a little and looked at John with such a sad expression.

He didn’t understand, he's too young, but he will later.

 

All his life it’s not even a threat, the possibility of unnatural life that his family could offer. It's not that he doesn't love anyone; he loved lots of people, on three continents. A couple girls he might have married if things had worked out, but none of them provided him temptation, it wasn't even a thought.

Now he thought it was because none of them understood him, none of them could really comfort him. All his life there was a part of his heart, an old and inherited something with dark eyes like old blood. Something nearly prehistoric that needed to hunt. It was hungry and aching for companionship and understanding. Wanting danger, wanting indulgence.

Sherlock was more than a flatmate he was a friend in a way that no one else had ever been. He allowed John to be ruthless, to be frightening, and later Sherlock would allow him a full peace. Tea on one side and death on the other, everything perfectly balanced. Who wouldn’t do horrific things for a friend like that?

"If you could come back from the dead would you want to?" John had asked Sherlock one lazy Saturday afternoon.

"Oh no," Sherlock said, hardly paying any attention. "I'll die young. Certainly before forty. That’s the way I prefer it, I’d hate to be old."

"But if you could be young, would you want to?"

"Pointless supposition," Sherlock had ended the conversation, so John had left it at that.

 

Before anyone could get there, John was at the base of the Falls, he had Cheated a little to get there. It was hard to explain Cheating; John had tried once in Med School when he was very, very drunk. He had said it like sliding between the spaces between shadows. It was hard to slide through, as narrow as a strand of hair, you always left something behind. John hadn’t Cheated since Afghanistan, but it was worth it. So much with Sherlock was worth it.

There was no time to mourn; there would be no need to mourn really. He hauled Sherlock's body up and held it close for a moment before hiding behind a tangled bit of greenery. He would have to Cheat again to get Sherlock somewhere safe, but he would have to rest first. There was something inside him that had split, something was broken and banging around somewhere in his chest. His body was empty, empty, empty, empty-

He had always belonged with Sherlock; he wasn’t going to be alone again.

He refused to be alone again.

Moriarty’s head popped out of the water; struggling, teeth bared. His head disappeared for a moment and then was back again. In his mind, John imagined wading into the water and holding Moriarty’s head down until he stopped struggling. But he was going to need Moriarty. Everything suddenly made sense, laid out in his mind like a corpse on the table, this cut here and that crack there, this is meant to pin that flap of skin and in the end you have an autopsy. Beautiful as bones.

Moriarty’s eyes were huge with confusion, pain and fear, heavy with a concussion. Stumbling on the bank and throwing up water, shivering. When he dragged himself away John watched him go.

He’d be seeing him in his dreams.

 

John struck quickly, that night tumbling awkwardly into Moriarty’s dream. When Moriarty was still weak and injured, less likely to be able to fight back. John took a warm bath, laid down on the hotel bed still dripping and closed his eyes, saying over and over to himself, James Moriarty,  
James Moriarty. He floated into the dream carefully, the man’s mind was sharp and twisted, he had a feeling if he was cut by anything in here he would catch some sort of soul deep infection.

He was in a school, he was guessing Moriarty’s, and sure enough as John opened a door (it didn’t matter which one, this was a dream, all doors lead where he needed them to lead), there he was. Little Jimmy was in the middle of a classroom with all the desks overturned. He was sobbing like only a child could. There was a sound in the air, something like the mixture of a waterfall and loud laughter. John knelt, trying to make himself look as nonthreatening as possible.

“Oh, Jimmy,” he said gently. “What’s wrong?” He opened his arms woodenly and Jimmy ran to him burying his head in the curve of John’s neck. John pushed down the urge to gag. “It’s alright,” he said gently, wrapping his arms around the little dream boy.

“I’m all alone!” the boy howled. “No one understands me anymore!”

“It’s okay,” John said in his best doctor’s voice. “You know. I bet you have lots of friends, I bet you have lots of names of people you know all over the world. Why don’t you tell me their names and I’ll go and get them for you?”

The next day Antonia and Leo Merino were found dead of heart failure in their hotel room. They were young and fit and it didn’t appear to be drugs, but when the local police looked into their personal affairs there was pressure from above to leave it be. It wasn’t the first time the coroner had been paid under the table, so he put the couple down for a cocaine overdose and went to have lunch with his friend from toxicology.


	2. Chapter 2

He and Lestrade go and to the pub and get very drunk several times. Sometimes they reminisced about Sherlock on cases, London in the rain and snow. Cases with diamonds and giants and small dogs who accidentally stole blackmail photos. Sometimes they said nothing at all.

“I keep waiting for him to wake up, to be there, for everything to be normal again,” John said into his pint. “I just want him to come back.”

“I know what you mean mate. It was the same way for me.” Lestrade said, just drunk enough to lean forward hazily, sober enough not to slur.

 _‘No it’s not,’_ John wants to say. _‘It’s nothing at all the same.’_

 

Stroking Sherlock’s hair then down, his fingertips brushing across his face like feelers, John felt at a loss. Although Sherlock was a little warm, humming with a sort of energy, his heart wasn’t beating, he wasn’t breathing. He wasn’t awake and deducing people’s childhood dream from the length of their fingernails. There had been so many dreams, shuffling and sliding through so many psyches. Dreams where he had to hunt, dreams where they collapse in fear, dreams where they trust him, floating in the midst of a happy little dream world. Plucking out the hearts of Moriarty’s organization in handfuls, and still Sherlock won’t wake up.

“I have a plan Sherlock,” he said conversationally, as if he was talking to a coma patient. “We’ll tell them you were travelling around taking down Moriarty’s organization. Traveling the world, fighting evil. There’s holes of course, in my plan. You’ll find them, when you wake up, you’ll make it airtight.”

There’s no response, not even a twitch, John fought the budding panic. Why won’t Sherlock wake up? Does he need special hearts? The hearts of evil men? Pure hearts? The hearts of virgins, like something out of a fairy tale? The hearts of children? How many? He’s doing everything _right,_ John whined to himself. He’s doing _everything he’s supposed_ to do. He knew he was getting stroppy and shook himself out of it.

More, he needed more. He checked his watch fitfully. He’s working part time now, a few hours at a time at the surgery, building up to life again. Everyone was treating him like the grieving widow, which wasn’t accurate by half, but gave him time to sleep. John knew he can’t abandon his life he had before; he’ll need it when Sherlock comes back. Normalcy will help Sherlock along once he woke up.

 

“It’s good to see you back again,” Sarah said gently. “I know he was a good friend.”

Sarah was sweet; she had always been so kind. “Thank you Sarah,” he said softly.

“It’s hard, I know,” her hand hands are strong and soft on his, callouses of someone that works with their hands. He let their fingers overlap a little so they were almost intertwined. “If you need anything…”

John smiled at her, “I appreciate it Sarah. I’m not ready to…”

“Oh no,” she flustered and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, a little tell. “I didn’t mean…”

“But later,” he smiled at her, tired from too much sleep and no rest while he’s sleeping. The anxiety and worry. “Later maybe?”

She smiled at him like he might be able to get a pity date out of this, but he didn’t feel like it would be right to press for it. He just wasn’t comfortable with taking advantage like that.

“John,” her head tilted to the side, “your eyes look strange.”

“Do they?”

“No, no,” she shook her head, laughing, “it’s just a shadow.”

 

In dreams, John crouched over Arturo Deleon, a small time drug pusher, who at times enjoyed a little smuggling on the side. He was weak from addiction and didn’t pose much of a threat; his mind was as easy to burst into as a wet paper bag. His psyche trembled pitifully under John’s hand. Pressing his Browning against Arturo’s heart, John said firmly, “I sacrifice this heart to Sherlock Holmes.”

That made twenty even. The dream form of the Arturo disappeared with the muffled BANG, as he died. John tucked his gun into the back of his waist band. It was important to use a totem with power, and he had used the Browning to save Sherlock so many times.

In the morning the heart attack isn’t even questioned, the man was filled with drugs and exorbitant living. His body is strained and broken. They just pack him up and shake their heads. A dealer should know better than to get too deep into his own wares.

 

When Ella asks him how he’s been coping, he answers honestly.

He’s been sleeping a lot.

 

Mycroft doesn’t look good at all. He’s very pale, deep circles until his eyes. His force of will was tight and terrifying, he was trembling with it. John couldn’t calculate weight like the Holmes brothers, but he was sure Mycroft had lost quite a bit. He looks like a man. Just a regular man that had lost his brother and was trying to look like he wasn’t suffering with it. It made John feel a little guilty, at this secret he was keeping, he wanted to tell Mycroft it would be okay, Sherlock was coming back.

“Where were you? Where were you when Sherlock went over?” he was a rather tall man, tight in John’s personal space, eyes narrow.

It started as a somewhat polite but pointed interview question, but ended as the segway for a series of increasingly pointed and loud accusations. John understood, the two of them suffer together for a lost brother, it was worse for Mycroft because Mycroft worried constantly and John had hope. But every day he still suffered, turning to share a joke with a Sherlock that was absent, their apartment full of solemn hateful cups of tea just a reminder no one will drink them.

“I went to the bottom of the Falls, I went to go see if he was alive,” John said finally in the lull during which Mycroft was breathing heavily, face turned away from him. “How to help him. I couldn’t just stand there.” His voice sounds odd, coming out of his mouth, the sleeping pills he stole from work are making him heavy.

“Something’s wrong,” his eyes narrowed at John.

“No really,” John barked back at him. How could something not be wrong, Sherlock was lying unresponsive on his bed at 221B.

“No, you’re not grieving. You’re worried… anxious. That something will happen, not that something has. You’re desperate, but not with grief. Why?” he looked like a wild animal with his teeth bared.

“Mycroft,” John said, his whole body was shaking, everything was shaking, was he crying, how long had he been crying? “Please.”

When Mycroft released him his legs stuttered and he almost fell to the ground, John stuttered out, “I was supposed to _protect him._ I’m supposed to be-”

“Your eyes look odd,” Mycroft said. Interrupted him with the ultimate in nonsequitur, staring at him with detached curiosity. 

“What?” he blinked at him.

“I had thought they were blue.”

 

Moriarty was grinning at him, a pleased little smile like a razor blade; they were having tea in a garden that was going very aggressively out of its bounds. The topiary was going feral, the roses were twisting with thorns that looked they could punch through his palm. But this was a dream, so if they looked like they could, they would if he wasn’t careful. “Tea?” John asked politely.

Moriarty knew something was wrong subconsciously. He knew that John wasn’t quite right, didn’t belong, but he hadn’t quite put it all together yet. Why would he, dreams were one of the few safe places from the outside world, even for psychopaths. So far, Moriarty had thought it was some sort of game he was playing with himself. And he did love games.

“What a lovely little party you’ve put on. The garden is so nice in the spring.”

“I’m thinking of a vacation actually, could you suggest someplace?”

This was the signal to the madman across the table that the game was about to start. John was under the table, as flat as a stone, when it came to word play. His mind was like Sherlock’s, not in its beauty or shape or latticed intricacy (something organic and vaguely blue), but big and fast. So John played tricks, he made gardens and white painted tables in the garden. He made teacups that were never quite full and teapots that never run out. He attacked in subtle ways, shifting reality, leeching and gnawing away at the subconscious. It was three months and John has been riding Moriarty viciously for names.

“Greece does sound lovely this time of year,” he said; if he gave a centimeter he may lose it all. “Tea?”

There was very little of the real, deep down Moriarty, the Moriarty that has nothing to do with memories and intellect and loneliness (well some loneliness, people who are different always feel a little lonely) that John hasn’t looked at, some of it he’s touched, some of it he’s only looked at, some of it he just knows where it is. If given enough time John could blast out his heart like a mortar shell.

“Are those all of the men that work there?” John said. He has worked these months to develop his memory, it is getting better. He wondered if perhaps his growing memory for names is part of his loss of regret.

He sat like a pillar of stone giving nothing away, solemn and inescapable. For a moment he wishes he could step out of himself and look through Moriarty’s eyes and see what he looks like. Does he even have a face or is it just his _Johnness_ that allows the man to recognize him? There is an awareness superseded by his incredible grief at being alone, that he may be losing himself. But what would it profit him to keep himself and lose the one person that understood him. That thing inside him that John can never escape again is calling to run shoulder to shoulder and chase and danger and defend, its loose and loud now, pounding in his body.

“You always were such a good little pet,” he grinned around his biscuit. “What a good little boy you are. You’d do _anything_ to help Sherlock, wouldn’t you? ” He was a perfect little caricature of a cat vivisecting a mouse as it played with it. All he needed were wee little whiskers and fluffy little ears.

“Yes.”

John filled up Moriarty’s cup again.

“Anything.”

Something flashed across Moriarty’s face that could have been fear. It was gone as quickly as it came. An immune response that even his own subconscious had dismissed immediately.

“More tea?” John said.


	3. Chapter 3

In the morning John was exhausted, he’s been running through heads all night, some of them quite feisty. The pills have made him a little groggy and his brain was simply exhausted. It was like final exams times twelve. But it was worth it. Sherlock wasn’t awake, it wasn’t that much of an improvement, but he was breathing, his heart was beating.

John stayed crouched by Sherlock’s side, his fingers on his pulse for hours, panting out low grateful breaths. He wasn’t awake yet, his eyes weren’t open, he wasn’t speaking, but it was close, he was almost there. Every once in a while Sherlock would take a short, little, almost gasp.

 

John’s left eye was a ruddy almost black so that no white showed; his right eye was almost the same, there was only a little white left in the top corner when he looked to the side. He found a pair of glasses that were nearly opaque and always wore them out of the house. His hand was gentle on Sherlock’s forehead, watching the pale forehead crease, the fingers twitch in dreams.

He met Sarah in the park, on a bench out in the middle of everything, it was a bit, well, public for what he was pretty sure will be a private conversation. She looked small and pale, incredibly self-contained, bending into herself.

“John,” she asked him and there’s a long pause. “Are you alright?”

He smiled at her gently, exhausted, Moriarty had started trying to fight back, “Yeah, just still getting over it. These have just been hard months for me.”

“You just seem… off,” she said with extreme care.

“I'm _grieving_ Sarah, my best friend went off a _cliff.”_

“I’ve been thinking,” she said quickly, her breath coming soft and quickly, like a frightened rabbit. “You’ve been so good to work for us. At the surgery. How about you take a few weeks off, paid?”

“Are you sure? Flu season is coming and-”

“Just take it,” Sarah said quickly and then seemed to come back to herself. “It’s fine John, when you’re feeling more yourself come back.”

John narrowed his eyes behind his sunglasses, but then his face shifted into his easy self-deprecating smile. “Alright. A couple weeks then?”

Feel more himself? He’s felt more himself these past few weeks than he had his whole life, and it was only getting better.

 

“Boss, you don’t look so good.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Moriarty snarled.

He got a little bit of satisfaction from the way his second in command leaned back. 

“Are you sure you look-” Moran’s eyebrows came together in something like concern.

“I said I’m fine, but this!” he swept all the papers onto the floor with a roar. “This is NOT fine!”

“I’m sorry, Boss its-”

“One, two, even seven. Sixty, _sixty._ Sixty is not a coincidence or an accident or a hereditary history of heart trouble. It is an attack.”

“You’ll figure this out.” His second’s concern, which usually amused him, or gave him a sort of sadistic pleasure to be able to someone such a flighty intimate kind of discomfort, grated on him. He wanted to rip out his concern with a pair of rusty pliers.

“Greece is down Sebastian. I’ve lost Greece. Everyone is either dead or running scared. In one night I lost an entire country. I’m going to find whoever it is and kill them slowly over a period of twelve years.”

“Should I take care of the runners?” That was good, Moran always knew what to do.

“Yeah, yeah,” he knelt down to gather up the papers he had spread across the floor. He was going to need a map and a calendar. “Question them first, torture them please.”

 

When he woke from his tumble through a few members of a Colombian airline (run by a shadow corporation of course, he had let the receptionist go, she was young and didn’t know for whom she was working) there was sound from Sherlock’s room. The sound a wounded animal made as it dragged itself away. John was on his feet and down the stairs in a dark flit, swinging open the door of Sherlock’s room. He felt caged by the doorframe, bound in, but he couldn’t leave it. Slowly, his panting mouth curled up, up, up into a grin, a little giggle escaping in joy. A solo burst of light.

“Sherlock!” he was on his knees, bringing his shoulder up under Sherlock to prop him up. His arms tight around his chest, tight enough so he could feel him breathing.

“Where was I? Where was I?” Sherlock was shaking and has started to cry. “I was somewhere… I was somewhere…”

“It’s alright,” John was blubbering, caught on repeat, _itsalright,itsalright,itsalright,itsalright._ Sherlock’s long limbs were knotted and sprawled all over each other, half on the bed and half in John’s arms. He was spilled, struggling to find a bone to hold his body up.

“No, it’s not, I can’t _remember._ What happened? I was in the-”

“That’s enough,” John barked, “you’re here now. You’re here and safe Sherlock. I’ll take care of you; no one will ever hurt you again. I won’t let them, I won’t _let them.”_

Sherlock looked at John, eyebrows coming together, when his eyes focus on John he screamed.

“Hush, hush it’s okay-”

Something solid seemed to have been found in Sherlock, because instead of flopping uselessly in his arms he pulled back his hand and cuffed John across the face. Yelping, high and sharp and betrayed John scurried away back against the wall of the bedroom breathing with thin little wheezes.

“I’m in Hell,” Sherlock whispered in the smallest voice John had ever heard. That’s not right, Sherlock should be _happy,_ why wasn’t he happy? “This is Hell and I’m in it.”

“No, no,” John whimpered and slowly moved closer, as if he was afraid he might get cuffed again. “It’s okay. You’re home, this is 221B. This is Baker Street.”

“But you’re, you’re… What are you?” John could see the great big beautiful force of will that belonged to Sherlock force the gear to start turning again. Forcing down the analytical response.

“I’m John,” he cried mournfully, like he was dying, like he’d been gutted and old husks of hearts were spilling out onto the floor. “I’m your friend. How could you Sherlock? How could you just plan to die and leave me alone?” He sobbed, wiping away at his big dark eyes with the ends of his jumper sleeves, still trying to make himself as small and nonthreatening as possible, exactly like a dog that had suddenly been kicked when it was expecting to be petted. “How could you do that?”

“Shh,” he said suddenly, “stop crying John.”

“I can’t _help_ it. I don’t mean to,” he was still scrubbing at his face.

“John,” Sherlock asked in the same tone as someone might ask, ‘did you leave the milk out?’ with only the barest tremble underneath, “Did you go mad?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding apologetically. “A little. I need you; no one else understands the hunt.”

“John,” there was a pause; John peeked at him, from behind his jumper sleeves. The horror was gone, Sherlock’s face was blank, like a mask, a mask that’s trembling slightly like something behind it was trying to get out, but the strings were tied on tight. “Did you do something awful?”

“Yeah,” the word slid out in a big gasping sigh. “Just a little.”

“This is going to sound like an odd question John, but I feel under the circumstances it is a pertinent question.”

“Okay,” the crying had stopped and John was kneeling, head tucked down, sniffling slightly. John didn’t mean to be this way _he was a soldier,_ but after all his work, all his exhaustion, all his efforts to be rejected…

“Did you sell your soul John?”

“No,” John said softly.

“What did you do then?”

There was a vague hand gesture, a movement from his heart, or his head or some other deep, deep place. “I gave you their hearts.” John’s hand reached out, suddenly kneeling very near to Sherlock and pressed over Sherlock’s sternum, Sherlock was shivering. Under John’s palm there was suddenly the beat of dozens of hearts, beating for Sherlock. “I took their hearts and gave them to you.”

Sherlock looked sad.


	4. Chapter 4

John helped Sherlock into bed again, leaning back in a mess of pillows like a lazy prince and smiled so happily it was almost possible to miss those big redblack holes that should be eyes. He plodded pleasantly to the kitchen and put on the kettle.

These were the things John was unaware of because Sherlock made sure he was unaware of them:

Sherlock nearly had a panic attack. _Calm yourself, don’t be pedestrian. Reason not madness, you need reason not madness. Oh_ John.

Sherlock tried to decide whether or not he was currently dead and in hell. _No way of telling, but there’s no torment here except the notJohnness of this John, except it is only that face_ that face _but the Johnness is there, it is identifiable, there is data. There is evidence. Evidence of life._

Sherlock tried to decide whether or not this was actually John. _John would never. John would never. John would. For me. He’s killed to save me before. Face calm like it’s his nature, like cell growth and breathing and heartbe-_

_It is John._

Should Sherlock kil- _Stop there. This is John. He’s in the kitchen making tea. You can hear him. He cried with relief when he saw you were alive. This is_ John.

When John returned Sherlock was only looking too pale and laid out, the same lazy prince as before. Not lazy no, those long fingers scrambling out like antennae, weakly, looking for stimulus. One would have thought resurrection would prevent boredom for a few minutes. John had no idea of anything but that Sherlock had been lying in bed.

 

Sherlock had all sorts of questions, but he was obviously fading, like how he got after he had stayed up too long for a case. John smiled affectionately at him scooting the plate of digestives closer to Sherlock’s hip. Sherlock waved that off of course in favor of more questions, John didn’t mind that so much. The more Sherlock talked the less its sounds like his voice was about to break at odd moments, he sounded more like himself. “My brain just works differently now,” John said not quite apologizing, because there was nothing wrong with the way he was now.

He waved that away, “Anyone can go mad, people do it every day. I want to know about how you…” being at a loss for words was frustrating for him, John could see it in the cross twist of his mouth, “give me those hearts.” There was no yawn but Sherlock was slowly paling into a color that looked like bleached bone.

Leaning forward, John braced Sherlock’s hand around his cup before it could slip through his fingers onto the duvet, “You’re fading Sherlock. I need to go hunting.”

“What do you do? With the bodies?” Sherlock asked weakly. Gently John slipped the tea cup out of his hand and put it on the night stand.

“What bodies?”

“Of the people. The hearts John,” he said in the tone that tacked on an extra _idiot_ to the end. It gave John a little jolt of happiness. Annoyance too, but mostly happiness. “What do you do with the bodies afterward?”

“Nothing. I go into dreams, I take their hearts there… Sherlock you need to rest. I’ll be here when you wake up. I won’t leave you, ever.”

Sherlock shivered a little at that, fighting to keep his eyes open before exhaustion won out.

 

John woke to long fingers shaking him; he curled into a knot whimpering.

“John. John! _John!”_ that was an order, a call, his head snapped toward the sound, hands reaching out shaking for something to steady himself with, to find something to fasten him to wakefulness. “What is it John?”

 _”Moriarty.”_ he sobbed into Sherlock’s chest; there were no tears only deep, deep choking… “I have to-” he covered his mouth with one hand and stumble ran into the bathroom.

A little later he sat in the living room with his feet under him and Sherlock panting on the sofa.

“Don’t take it too hard,” John said softly. Afraid to offend.

“I’m a fit adult male,” whinged back. It was like old times and John smiled. “Walking into the living room should not wind me.”

“It’s nearly been a year; your body is just weak.”

“A year!” Sherlock bellowed.

“It took time to gather the names. I have a plan,” he brightened, not looking quite as shell shocked as he had after emerging from his latest foray into Moriarty’s mind. “We can say you faked your death to go and take down Moriarty’s organization. Isn’t that a good idea?”

“But I haven’t been taking Moriarty’s organization down,” he waved that off.

 _“I_ have,” John said. “I told you I’ve been going into dreams. I need a name to claim a heart, but I didn’t have any, so I went into Moriarty’s dream to gather the names of his people. So the plan will work, I thought of that.”

“You’ve been going into _Moriarty’s_ head? John you _idiot.”_

“Where else could I get names?” John snapped back, it never was a good idea to let Sherlock trod to heavy on him. “It was his fault you left in the first place; he was the one you were chasing after, who pushed you over. He was going to help get you back. And everyone thinks they're safe inside their head, they always think they’ll be safe there. He hasn’t found me out all this time, not till last night. He thinks he’s so clever, so brilliant, that he can fix any problem. Well, he’s not, he’s prey. The brighter he burns the better I can find him. He can run until his bones are scrapping the ground, but when he closes his eyes his throat is _in my teeth.”_

“John,” Sherlock said in a very small voice from the sofa. Thready, thin, slipping weakly from his lips to asphyxiate in the air like a small fish. He had sunk down into the sofa with a child’s large eyes.

John was kneeling by him in an instant, holding one long wrist to check his pulse. “Are you alright Sherlock? Are you feeling sick?” One hand curled gently, like the hand of a comforting mother, around Sherlock’s, “Are you alright?”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed and twitched back and forth, “Oh. _Oh._ For _me_ really, really for me. Just myself. That’s why. _Oh._ Of course, you’d never… Not just for… I thought you were you, but you really are you!”

John felt Sherlock’s forehead for fever, dark eyes pulling in concern, “Do you feel dizzy Sherlock or-”

“I’m brilliant John,” Sherlock smiled at him, it was small but real. “You really care for me, what a great monstrous love you’ve thrown about my neck. Not that I’ve very good with these sorts of things. Perhaps if I was…” the smile slid slightly toward the cunning pleased-with-self smirk that Sherlock got sometimes when he was basking in his superiority. “But no, sociopathy apparently has its benefits. It’s settled then, everything is settled.”

“Sherlock, you’re not making any sense.” He didn’t seem to be running a fever, but it could be exhaustion or hunger or any number of things.

“Tea please,” Sherlock said. “And your laptop.”

Good. Good.

Back to normal.

John snapped to, “Why don’t you use your own?” he whinged, even while moving to get his laptop off the desk.

Back to normal.

\---

The wall by the sofa was flocked with fluttering post-its, like birds wings, scrawled across loosely in Sherlock’s writing, like he had tossed long italicized leashes around their necks.

“John,” he held out one hand and John was there ready to offer support. “I want to go up the stairs this time. I’m going to make it to the top today.” Brushing John aside with a spattering of fingertips against the shoulder of his jumper, Sherlock stood himself up again, “I can walk by myself, I’m not a child, just be nearby.” As much as he might complain, he preferred it when Sherlock was a little harsh; John knew he didn’t mean anything by it. It was better for Sherlock to be a little rude, a little abrasive, than to have him weakly murmuring platitudes. It worried John terribly to have him too nice.

“Up the stairs we go then,” John said cheerfully. Sherlock had been increasingly adventurous in wandering about the flat, waking up old muscles. After a day that was too quiet, on a day where John got suspicious John would slide under Sherlock’s bed and sleep there to be sure that Sherlock wouldn’t get over confident again and fall against something less forgiving than a stuffed badger. Or that rather, if he did John would be there to fix the necessary damage promptly. He’d had to clean and dust a bit underneath the bed, but he fit there very nicely.

He liked the cozy dark.

So as not to displease the finicky twist Sherlock got when one of his personal goals was waylaid, John trod slowly behind him instead of offering him his shoulder. He was in no rush at all. They reached the first landing where Sherlock leaned a hip against a wall, panting lightly through his victorious grin, “Mycroft doesn’t know.”

“What?” John blinked back.

“Mycroft doesn’t know that I’m alive, about you and waking me up.”

“No,” John frowned. “I wasn’t sure he’d understand, that he might try and take you away.”

Disengaging from the wall, Sherlock stepped forward triumphantly to grip the banister, “Nine more steps.”

Half way up, Sherlock’s foot slipped and he fell backward and John’s hand lifted, and all that was supporting Sherlock’s weight was the ball one of one bare foot, long toes gripping the dark stair runner and John’s splayed hand over the center of his spine. Arms out loose, like those of a martyred saint Sherlock showed no distress in the fact the only thing tying him to earth (and preventing an uncomfortable reintroduction to it) was one pale foot and John’s hand. John was too far back, he had to lean forward for the catch and now he was trapped too, holding Sherlock up until the man deigned to find a third means of support.

Later John will consider that although Sherlock genuinely wanted to master the stairs, that this moment, with the two of them leaning together was planned.

“John, I don’t want you to go into Moriarty’s mind anymore,” Sherlock said softly, absently, like he was in a sort of daze. The hand over his spine remained steady. Because he was a few steps above John, John looked up at the back of Sherlock’s curly head and felt like he was in an Escher drawing.

“What?”

“No more, I’ll find you someone else, a different criminal overlord.”

“But he’s easy, he’s an enemy and I’m very careful.”

“John,” Sherlock said far away, but firm in what he was saying. Like he was trying to tell John something very important underwater. “He is not a nice person. He is not well. I want you to stay away from him.”

“Why?” John hated how his voice broke, anguish spilling over his lips. “So you can leave me alone again?”

“I can honestly tell you I’m terrified of the thought of you being left alone. Of you being by yourself. Leaving has been removed from the table, so to speak. I don’t want him anywhere near you. Please John, no more. The thought you in his head is unpleasant.”

“I haven’t even been in his head for the past week, I tried a couple times, but we’re not always asleep at-”

“John.” Sherlock interrupted.

“I have to,” John interrupted right back, “this is how it works. I started the hunt, I have to finish it.”

“Fine, then finish it quickly. Kill him and be done.”

“He has so many names though; we could still use him….”

“Bring me his heart,” ordered the voice and a shiver went through John.

“Yes.”

“Very good,” Sherlock said gently, one long hand reached out and looped around the banister enough so that John could push forward enough to get him on his feet again. “To the top of the stairs then.”

 

Sebastian didn’t like this, not at all. Everything was wrong, his back was up, he could feel danger moving over him like the eye of an enemy sniper. This was not how the Boss worked, how he acted. Not the boss who shammed it up that he was so sweet and defenseless, but had his hand wrist deep in everyone’s guts before they realized it.

“It has to do with sleep somehow,” Boss said, shivering with exhaustion and caffeine.

Sebastian was looking at his Boss, brilliant razor sharp, better than twelve tigers and for the first time in his life felt pity. It was terrifying, disorienting, to have your God made into man, to have someone take a hammer to your idol.

“Are you crying?”

Everything was swept off the Boss’ desk with the sharp movement of one arm, before he stumbled and almost fell. Sebastian kept him upright, just barely, there were two minions in with them (that’s what the Boss called them, his little minions) and Sebastian shot them both, center of the head, for seeing the Boss cry.

He jiggled the Boss’ chin gently in his hand. “Boss, Boss, _Boss._ James.”

Boss blinked awake and cracked a fist across Sebastian’s face. People underestimated his size all the time, the Boss was small, but he was well trained and mean. “Good Moran. Keep me awake. I need to figure out how he’s doing it.”

“He?” he was nursing his jaw.

“Sherlock Holmes. He has to be involved, he’s alive somewhere. He has to be. Oh, it had a face, a face like a fire burning, the whole world like a coal.” Hands, small, pale and strong kneaded his arm like a restless cat, “He’s not going to beat me at this game.”

“Tell me what you want to do. Just give me your orders.”

The dry laugh he got back scraped him a little. “Really, Sebastian.”

“Let’s be honest, you haven’t slept for fourteen days and have ingested four times your body weight in coffee, you’re half my size and you’ve already calculated how different ways there are to kill me without sitting up. I’m not an idiot.”

“Twenty seven,” the Boss snarled at him.

“I am, as ever, terrified of you and awaiting your orders.” It was true, nothing was more true.

“Blood. Rivers and rivers of blood. I’m going to bathe in it.”


	5. Chapter 5

That John hadn’t been able to meet with Moriarty hadn’t been a surprise to John, he couldn’t expect the madman to lay sleeping all the time, just waiting for him. John wouldn’t try it again anyway, now he had an order to go. Tonight, tonight he’ll reach for Moriarty in earnest.

It was a good day, Sherlock was drunk on his victory over the stairs and ordered tea and hobnobs for all and assorted. They laughed and watched James Bond Sherlock taking turn to throw popcorn with extreme abandon at the screen, “That’s not how a car blows up!”

That night John woke up to the sound of… something.

There was the sound of Sherlock sleeping above him. It was dark under Sherlock’s bed, and the room seemed still, but his body hummed. When he peered over his shoulder there were two feet in the doorway. There wasn’t a lot of room under a bed, but he managed to shift himself, concerned.

John was naturally concerned, he couldn’t see up past he man’s knee but –

_The sound of **gun, gun in the bedroom** cocking-_

_A soft sound like the lulling mating call of some lonely beetle-_

_How dare he, how dare he in the-_

_Sherlock -_

SHERLOCK-

_pro(it makes the sound of a soft pop when it snaps)tect the Sherlock-_

“John! John! Stop he’s dead!”

“What?” John looked over his shoulder at Sherlock who was sitting up in bed, hair curling everywhere.

“Everything is fine John, I’m safe.”

John looked down; he was sitting on the chest of a man in dark clothing whose head is tilted up, like he’s trying to look away from John at an unnatural angle. Dead, the man was dead. His jaw has been shattered at its point of conjunction with the skull, like someone had pressed down too hard with their thumb and there was the faint shadow of contusions along his chest and shoulders. John stumbled back and away. Sherlock was there, long arms around him, “Are you okay?”

“What?”

“Are you okay? You look… that is to say, you don’t look yourself.”

“I’m fine, its fine.”

There was a squeeze once, tight, and John suddenly felt better. “Go into the living room and lay down on the sofa for a while, I’ll take care of this.”

John nodded; only stopping to stamp once, insanely on the wrist gripping the gun with the silencer attached obscenely to it and kicked the gun away. So much for getting Moriarty tonight.

“I’m safe John, it’s alright.”

“It was such a good day too,” John said mournfully.

 

The next day Sherlock was on edge, he put on a patch and ripped it off with dismay ten minutes later, “I seem to have lost my addiction to nicotine.”

John rolled his eyes at that, “Well that’s just too bad.”

Narrowed eyes were the only reply Sherlock dignified that with.

“Oh don’t go into a strop.”

“Hmm,” he said and rolled to face the wall, as if he would ever to anything as undignified as climbing over coffee tables or shooting holes in walls or threaten to beat Anderson to death with a spatula. When John hadn’t responded immediately to Sherlock’s fit of dramatics one blue gray eye peered at him.

“Yes?”

“John.”

John waited.

“John come here, I’m going to ask you questions now.”

He blinked for a moment and put down his paper in favor of climbing onto the foot of the sofa, shifting Sherlock’s feet so he could sit cross legged facing him. He had no reason not to trust him with the truth. This was part of their life now. “Short or long first?”

“Short, I can question you at length,” his hands steepled in front of his face. The healthy flush was leaving him; John would have to hunt again soon. “You spoke of dreams, how is it that you enter them?”

Straight down to business then, John grinned.

“Well, I need a name, a real name, a full name. Once I have that I go to sleep and appear in their dream, in the dream I find them, I claim the heart on your behalf and use my totem to separate the heart from them.”

“Your totem?” eyebrow up.

“I can’t tell.” He would if he could, and knowing Sherlock, he’ll figure it soon anyway. “Once you know, you can’t tell either.”

“Once _I_ know?”

 _“Iraq or Afghanistan?”_ John quipped back.

“Of course. Is it easy then?”

John gave him a look.

“Alright,” he opens his mouth to ask the next question just as there’s a knock on the door. Sherlock goes tense all over and looks over at it with large eyes. He looks so like a child.

“John?” Mrs. Hudson said through the door. She doesn’t come into the flat anymore, but she’ll leave biscuits on their doorstep.

“It’s okay Sherlock; it’s just Mrs. Hudson again.”

“Of course,” Sherlock snaps at him, “who else would it be?” But Sherlock is distraught, John can tell immediately, so when their much anticipated interview is cut short by a demand for tea he doesn't think to question why.

 

John was upstairs changing when he hears the knock at the door; it was loud, like someone has put their whole fist into it. Like someone was furious. He started to call down to Sherlock that he’ll be down to get the door in a mo, just let him zip his fly when he heard the door open. It was a stupid thing for Sherlock to do, very stupid, no one knows yet. They haven’t come up with the brilliant reintroduction into society yet. He’s trying to think of necessary damage control he’ll have to do with whoever saw a supposedly dead man but there was no shout of shock, no stammer. Only silence and of course the one day he needed to get downstairs his zipper was on strike.

“You- You came,” Sherlock voice floated softly through the cracked door of John’s room. “I mean I was wondering when-” and then he said _"umph.”_

Something was wrong.

John found himself downstairs before he quite knew how he got there.

Mycroft Holmes was standing in their living room.

“All this time, _all this time,”_ he hissed at his brother. _“You selfish little child.”_

Mycroft raised his hand; John saw the tension starting the hand flattening for a slap and Sherlock got so far as shouting, “Mycroft! Don’t-” when John charged. Mycroft hit the wall with a force that made the whole house rattle in offense. He had the British Government a foot off the ground, his neck curled back as he growled low in his throat.

_Enemy._

_Enemy in the den._

_How dare it._

_How dare it._

_HOW DARE IT RAISE A HAND_

_Stop it._

_Stop the enemy._

_Rip it up._

_Rip it up._

_Keep the Sherlock safe._

“Sweet Merciful-” the enemy said, it started reaching blindly for something, hands reaching frantically.

“John,” said a voice, _the voice_ and John’s head cocked toward it. “It’s fine John. It’s all fine.”

John knows its fine, the enemy has been neutralized. He likes the voice though; he doesn’t feel so ugly in his eyes and in his teeth anymore. It was alright.

Warm long fingers land on the top of his scalp and slowly trace downward to the base of his skull. Long fingers moved over his head, over his short hair, smoothing it down. It feels warm and good and comfortable. He liked to feel Sherlock’s warm living (living living living living) palm against his scalp, over his ears. Sherlock’s hand was trembling wildly, but it’s there. It was there and that was what mattered, “Put Mycroft down John, he’s not a threat.”

He jerked his head back to the enemy archenemy (the Mycroft) pinned to the wall, the growling gone soft and ponderous.

“He’s our friend John. It’s okay,” the voice was deep and calm and lulling. It just got deeper and calmer and lulling-er. “Mycroft is our friend. He loves me.”

One hand, the hand not on John’s head reached out and pressed against Mycroft, “Mycroft,” the voice, the good voice, the word was very slow. _"Mycroft. Are you not. My. Friend?”_

The enemy (Mycroft) gasped slowly his ribs struggling against the pressure John was putting on them.

“Mycroft.”

“Yes, of course,” Mycroft said. “You’re my brother. I thought I was going to break apart when you… when I thought you were dead. You’re my baby brother!”

“It’s okay John,” Sherlock said softly, his hand moving over where John was holding Mycroft. “Let’s put Mycroft down.”

John set him down gently and stepped back.

There was a crack in the wall.

“My left shoulders out of place,” Mycroft said conversationally. “And I might have a concussion.”

“I hope you don’t have any men coming because that would be a rather bad idea right now,” the voice was good and soft and John was shivering a little. He’s turned gently and pulled close so he can turn his head and listen to Sherlock’s hearts. It was a nice sound. “Keep your voice soft, isn’t that right John?” said the voice above him. “Keep it soft and gentle and he’ll come out of it. It’s fine. It’s all fine. It’s alright.”

He could feel the warm good voice through Sherlock sternum.

“Go sit down Mycroft; we’ll just be a second here.”

“I’m not going to-”

“Shut up, Mycroft,” the voice said, still soothing.

“Sherlock,” John said in his usual mixture of good humor and mild annoyance. “That’s rude; don’t tell your brother to shut up.”

Sherlock gave him a tight little squeeze and let out a hysterical little laugh, “Oh John. No, I wouldn’t want to be rude.”


	6. Chapter 6

John offered to make tea, but Sherlock wanted him close. The appearance of his brother had clearly unsettled him, even though he obviously was the one to contact him. He stared at Mycroft coolly, as if he was categorizing him and clamped a hand around John’s wrist. Being Sherlock, he would never come out and mention being nervous, but why else would he be holding so tightly to John while staring Mycroft down like an angry cat.

Mycroft wasn’t much better, his shoulder was okay considering, but he looked ridiculous with two ice packs and frozen peas attached to his 500 pound shirt. There was something that stirred at the back of John’s mind at that, uncomfortably, but whenever things start to connect there was a pull on his wrist and Sherlock said coolly, “To me John, to me.” John looked at the subtle smile of worry, relief and pride (John didn’t understand that last one) and the connection fizzled away from him while he asked earnestly if Sherlock was alright. He doesn’t like this cool wrong-footedness of Sherlock’s with his brother.

As much as he wanted to stay, he didn’t want Sherlock and Mycroft to end up like he and Harry. “Why don’t I let the two of you talk?”

Mycroft’s eyes were hard and hurt and fuzzy from hitting the wall, he was silent.

“John-” Sherlock started.

John patted the hand clamped around his wrist. “This is the first you’ve seen your brother since-” he is incapable of saying the word. “You went away.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, “Death doesn’t effect-”

“Sherlock,” John didn’t want to hear whatever it was his flatmate was about to say. Not if it had the word death in it. “I’ll just be upstairs, call and I’ll be down in a minute. Less.”

He managed a 30 minute nap on top of his duvet with a sort of dream drive by before he woke with a yawn and Cheats as he rolls onto his belly so that he slipped between the shadows to the top of the stair where he could hear Sherlock talking.

 

“From the information I have gathered,” said Sherlock’s deep voice, and John could picture him laid out on the sofa… no, Sherlock wouldn’t want to be at the disadvantage, he’s crouched in his chair, eyes narrowed. “John is a structural hybrid with his abnormalities all attached to recessive genes which become dominant upon severe psychological and emotional trauma. Once they have become activated catering to them makes them become more and more dominant and results in physiological and psychological changes and the creation of a symbiotic relationship.”

“I’m concerned with the degree of psychological change.”

“He’s fine,” Sherlock barked back.

“He is _not fine,_ I am _concerned.”_

“You are a fat idiot. John is my friend.”

John felt a surge of happy warmth.

“He has changed.”

 _“No,”_ Sherlock growled, but it was cold, not how he’d picture a growl at all. It was flat and cold as glass. “He’s the same. Exactly the same. Better. I know that look; really, could you be more obvious. Don’t ever, don’t try it. We’re connected now, if he dies, I die. If you touch him you’ll _murder_ me Mycroft. Are you ready for fratricide?”

There was a long heavy silence. John’s fingers kneaded the carpet on the top step.

“Nothing mattered to John more than his humanity. He is deeply moral, intensely, annoyingly moral,” Sherlock’s voice was deep, intense and moved jaggedly with the rhythm of his voice, cut, cut, cutting like a saw. “And look at what he’s become. He did that for me.”

“That’s not fair Sherlock,” Mycroft’s voice was broken, falling and shattering down on the floor of 221B. “That’s so unfair. I don’t matter… I don’t _love_ you because I didn’t go and turn into a monster for you. I’m not worth a fig after years of worrying and protecting and suffering because I didn’t make myself an abomination for you? I’m so very sorry little brother.” The umbrella tip went _tap, tap, tap._

“He’s trying to protect me,” John said softly in the doorway, he Cheated his way down, slipping from one shadow to the other. “He doesn’t mean it; he’s just trying to protect me.”

The Holmes brothers both turned to look at him in surprise.

“You’re up,” Sherlock said faintly. His surprise probably comes in part from the lack of warning.

Rubbing absently at his chest John shrugged, “You were fading earlier. And you’re being an idiot.” He plods into the kitchen and puts the kettle on. “Tea Mycroft?” because of course Sherlock didn’t offer.

There was an awkward silence.

“Shut up Sherlock,” John said. He can hear Sherlock about to speak all the way from the kitchen and he had a good idea whatever he’s about to say was a bad idea. “Tea Mycroft?”

“Yes,” his voice was oddly unkind, edged.

With ceremonious precision John arranged the cups; milk measured by the tilt of his wrist for Mycroft, two sugars for Sherlock, steam rising nearly invisible like the whisper of a fog. An old ritual from childhood. He placed one cup to the left of Mycroft, who always sat in John’s chair. Maybe there was something in that, John never thought about it before.

Sherlock’s eyes were huge on John, his fingertips touched and stuck to John’s hand as he held out the cup. “You don’t need to protect me,” he said fondly

“Yes I do, you don’t see that-” he mouth closed flat over the end of that sentence, face gone blank.

“Think Mycroft, would you have found out that Sherlock was still alive if he didn’t contact you. If he really didn’t want to have any more contact with you all he had to do was never contact you again. He wants your help, he just panicked.”

_“I don’t panic.”_

John ignored that and turned back toward Mycroft. “Sherlock needs more than just me.”

“I don’t want him to _need_ me,” he was being mean, sharp and not caring about control like he usually did. They’ve entered some sort of bubble, or for a better metaphor, they’ve tied themselves together in a funny knot.

“How long does he keep things he wants,” John replied.

“I’m concerned about having something like you around my brother.”

John’s heart twisted in a mixture of pain and rage at the thought of losing Sherlock, Sherlock who had approached before John could say anything and has placed his long fingered hands on John’s tense shoulders. “There is nothing and no one with whom I could be safer. He has been entering the mind of Moriarty to feed me. Moriarty himself. There is nothing he won’t do to keep me safe.”

Half turning, as far back as he could look with Sherlock holding him still John frowned at him, “That’s how it’s always been Sherlock, nothing’s changed.”

“That’s right,” he said, but John felt like Sherlock wasn’t really speaking to him. “Nothing has changed at all.”

Once he was certain the Holmes brothers wouldn’t try to do each other harm John headed back to the kitchen to wash the cups, when he was down the two were sitting at opposite sides of the sofa looking cautiously at each other. He left them there slipping himself carefully out of the knot that was tying all three of them together and goes to sleep under Sherlock’s bed.

He really did need sleep.

He had a hunt to finish.


	7. Chapter 7

Jimmy was fishing with his Granny. She had on her nice soft floral dress, the one that meant they would go to town later and go to the shops and he would get to look over the counter at the big book with all the numbers curling and ordered across the white crisp pages. The numbers made him feel good and happy inside, like when he’d spent an afternoon almost, but not quite killing the neighbors’ cat over and over. He couldn’t wait until he could use a real live person.

“Let’s focus on the fishes,” Granny said, her voice was funny, it was too big.

Jimmy turned his face up toward the sun, smelling cut grass and sweet summer air, he kicked his worn out trainers over the water. It’d been a good morning, he was meant to do something earlier, but surely it could wait for fishing with Granny. His small fishing pole bobbed and he could feel her approval, her small mouth pulled into a big smile, and what a big smile it was too. He pulled the fish up, a small red brown creature hanging off his hook.

“Let me have it then,” Granny said, and the fish was trying to tell him something but it was such a little voice and Granny had such a big voice, she had a belt on with little hooks from which the his little fishes hung, their little eyes looking at him.

“What?”

“Don’t you want me to keep your fish for you Jimmy?”

“Of course, Granny,” he shook himself, her small soft small hands were too big, and calloused and his Granny’s hands, they were his Granny’s hands, he loved his Granny. She was so nice to him; she gave him biscuits and hugs and told him he was a good boy. The love he felt for her swelled up in his heart and…

Jimmy was fishing with his Granny. She had on her nice soft floral dress, the one that meant they’ll go to town later and go to the shops and he’ll get to look over the counter at the big book with all the numbers curling and ordered across the white crisp pages. The numbers make him feel-

Wait.

Wait.

“Jimmy,” Granny said.

Jimmy was fishing with his Granny. She had on her nice soft floral dress, the one that meant they’ll go to town later and go to the shops and he’ll get to look over the-

Wait.

He was supposed to-

_“Jimmy.”_

\- his Granny. She had on her nice soft floral dress, the-

“No!”

“What’s wrong Jimmy?” Granny said in her sweet kind voice.

“Stop it! You’re not her! Take her off right now!”

”Jimmy,” the voice was low and dangerous and warning him to be a good boy or no shops and no biscuits and he’ll be in his room, which was worse because it was boring.

“WHAT BIG TEETH YOU HAVE!” he screamed at it, he didn’t know why, he was running on instinct. Instinct would work.

His Granny’s soft floral dress and her soft skin peeled open like the rotten skin of a banana and out burst a- a- Jim’s mind met an impossible thing, recoiled in horror turned a mental corner and came back again. A wolf, a big bad wolf. Screaming, Jim spun on the ball of one foot and ran.

The behind him was big and horrible, but he knew the terrain, he could stay just ahead, just out of reach. He knew where the big trees were and the little streams and the hidey holes, there was one not that far, maybe if he could get to it… It snapped at his heel, he could feel it’s hot breath, curiously, dry and gritty, like a desert wind. If it had gotten its teeth in him it would have taken off his heel, never mind his Achilles tendon, and even if he could shake it off he would be done. Collapsed to the ground in a useless heap. Hobbling a broken step before it crushed him down to the ground. It leapt forward again, but he was there, at his hidey hole and he scrambled, rolled into the bramble patch that ran like fractals in a swath of the woods. Sometimes he’d go and hide here when the boys from town were chasing him, the pricks and pokes were curling black, like obsidian saw blades, but he knew his way through. He’d be safe here for a while.

But he wasn’t, just as he was getting his breath back, crying tears of relief, there was a crash like shattered glass and the thing behind him was breaking the brambles with something, shattering them, chasing him forward on his hand and knees. It pressing him forward driving him with fear and as he tumbled out of the patch and down the low slope on the other side he thought:

_Why was running? Why was he running?_

The bramble patch disappeared, the woods disappeared, the whole bloody childhood sham disappeared. He was not a child, he was not afraid of the dark.

He was James Moriarty.

With the narrow sound of whistling, the sky went black.

 

Arrows had turned the valley into a field of black stalks of wheat, the black feathers of the fletching rustling lighting in an internal wind. They had fallen like rain. Like the wrath of god.

The wrath of Jim.

That would show the little mangy pup to nip at Jim’s heels. He smiled to himself, playing with the dyed black feathers of an arrow. As far as the eye can see the world had gone black.

The body should be around here somewhere.

Should he burn it?

Perhaps he should eat it.

There were cracking sounds and trees were forcing themselves up out of the dirt again, big curling trees with great juicy eights and huge round zeroes. Jim plucked one off a branch and pressed it to his lips, the heady taste of mathematics singing against his taste buds. Too delicious.

He strolled, smiling, the clouds above him like golden asteroids murmuring calculations to him. Because he was watching them he didn’t become aware of the blood until it splashed against his shoe with a little plat. “Oh,” he grinned. “Johnny? Where are you dear?”

The blood rested in two little hollows in the ground, wee dimples, glistening darkly. He splashed it onto the grass with his toe, laughing before it realized it was eating through the fine Italian leather of his shoe, “Oh, sh-” Jim threw the shoe away from himself, made note to avoid John’s blood in the future and took two slow calming breaths in the meantime.

Everything was still fine. John Watson was dead.

He just had to find him.

Just find the body.

Follow the blood.

The arrows weren’t disturbed here; they had fallen straight into the ground. So John hadn’t been struck here, but he…

The body had to be nearby, just ahead surely.

He breached a hill, arrows parting before him like the red sea (why were there so many hills in his mind?) and there, up ahead were shattered arrows and the unmarred door of 221B Baker Street propped against something.

Oh, very clever puppy.

That was how this worked then, things of import and sentimentality. Although, really, 221B as an impenetrable fortress? Jim pulled up an arrow and tested the tip against one finger. Well, that’s a problem that can be solved.

There was a low growl behind him.

Oh.

Jim turned.

John Watson was still alive. John Watson was very large dog. John Watson had very big teeth. There were four black arrows in constellation in John Watson’s shoulder. John Watson grabbed them with his teeth and pulled them out one at a time.

“Please,” Jim said. Smiling at how John was sagging to one side, the thick blood in his tan fur. Smiling at the half mad pain in John’s eye and the way he gritted his teeth in determination. “I made the Russian mob squeal like a girl and I’m going to make you squeal too.”

It twists its head, spitting its blood at Jim, he clamored out of the way of the dark spray, catching a little on his face, before he scrubbed it off quickly with a shirt sleeve. Jim did remember his shoe.

 _"Are you five?”_ he spat out, all sharp clipped consonants. “That’s disgusting.” But while Jim was distracted it had slipped off into the trees.

“I’ve seen you,” John called back over the wind.

“At the risk of being clichéd, I’m the last thing you’ll see too. Didn’t you hear Johnny Boy? No one ever gets to me.”

After checking that his feet were artfully shod, Jim looked at the grass. It was soft and green, cluttered by arrows for a moment before the blades crack up, sharp and pert as razors.

There was a sudden yelp from somewhere to Jim’s right and he giggled.

 

The thing, the John Watson thing was limping, leaving a trail of blood, like a snail, but it was still dangerous. It was dangerous until he killed it. What he needed was a big game hunter.

Colonel Sebastian Moran stepped up next to him, sniper rifle leaning jauntily over his huge shoulder. He was impossibly large, impossibly broad, he nearly blocked out the sun. Is Moran actually that big in real life or was Jim imagining him so tall? Jim did a little correction and Sebastian was closer to the normal size of a man. Perfect.

“I have a job for you,” Jim grinned at him.

“What’s that boss?” he smiled back. How he always smiled, loose and jaunty in his beautiful suits and his old money ease, stiff and starched and good for the gun, that polished rifle up against his shoulder.

There’s a crack and Jim turned toward it, grinning, hand still clutching a black arrow before turning back in disappointment, he really wanted to jam it into John’s brain. Seb looked a little funny for a moment before Jim rubbed at his eye and everything goes into focus.

“I’m going to have you go on a little hunt for me; I do know how you love those.”

“No,” said Sebastian.

He stared at Sebastian in open mouthed shock before his eyes narrow, “I have a job for you Sebastian.”

“No,” Sebastian grinned at him.

He was off the script, why was he off the script?

“You _will_ take me seriously.”

Sebastian begun to laugh, his deep annoying laugh, like the one he gets for Mock of the Week. (Frankie Boyle could not _seriously_ be so funny that Sebastian had to disturb him with his obnoxious laughter.) It sounded too ostentatiously hearty. He was laughing and he was looking at Jim.

“Stop it! I’ll fire you, I’ll kill you, I’ll _burn_ you.”

He raised his arrow to stab Sebastian in his awful heart but it was like a word on the tip of his tongue. The crumbling edge of epiphany, like an invisible wall. He couldn’t.

He couldn’t.

Jim stumbled back furious, throwing the arrow away in fury. He might should keep it, but he didn’t want it anymore and it was too late now.

He was supposed to be watching for the John Watson thing, so he turned his head away again. But he couldn’t, he couldn’t turn his back on this, it wasn’t right. He actually stamped one foot, the blades of grass breaking like glass under his fine shoes. Sebastian, Seb just snorted, Jim was not a child! Sebastian should know better than that. Better than to laugh.

“Stop it Sebastian! You’re not meant to laugh at me!”

He only laughed louder and there was a tiger in the grass to his right (his right hand) ruddy dark ginger and sleek, but rumpled in the morning without its coffee and something dark behind him wearing combat boots now and dark, dark _(no one wants a little cry baby)._

“You’re not meant to laugh at me Sebastian!” Jim hated how he sounded. Hated it, hated it.

Boss, said the tiger and Sebastian was laughing through the smoke, shaking his head at Jim and there was something behind him but it was not as important as, “You’re not meant to do that!”

The tiger jumped, its paws were huge, the size of dinner plates, each padded toe short and thick separating to make them impossibly larger. It picked Jim up with the force of its breastbone against his tensed shoulder and Jim’s body was curled like a black comma against the thick pale pelt of the tiger’s belly. Jim couldn’t see past the tiger’s huge shoulder and thick fur and the smell of gun oil so he shifted to peer over the thick bones of the joint of the tiger’s elbow and saw something large and dark, leap through the spot Jim had been and tumble through the illusion of Sebastian who dissolved from a laughing Judas to flakes of dust and dried blood not architectural enough to be scabs.

Obviously Jim had underestimated his opponent, he was afraid again, not like a little boy, like a man. Informed caution. The tiger was cradling him, its huge dark mouth, crowned in ivory. Imperial teeth. The wolf thing, dog thing, John thing could kill his tiger if Jim let it. He tightened his fingers in its ruddy, nearly ginger fur as if that would protect it. He’d never wanted to protect anything before and so wasn’t quite sure if he was feeling protective or something else. The huge bones of the tiger and the heavy weight of its muscles held him tightly – gently –tightly.

“Boss,” the tiger said.

The low growl of John Watson, the massive dog thing edged in black and red turned brown with age was fading away. There was an edge of victory in Jim, shivering and weak, as thin and fine as a strand of hair.

The tiger bit Jim on the shoulder and words pour into the wound like venom until the teeth, their sharp tips touching the inner cavity of his lung and the marrow of his collar bone, caging his shoulder joint and become a large hand on his chin and he woke to the wide eyed face of his chief of staff. There were two new freckles (there were only two others), forming on the bridge of Sebastian’s nose like extremely small bruises.

But it didn’t look quite right.

He winked his left eye and everything went black.

Oh.

He was half blind.

He opened his left eye again.

“I know you said four hours Boss,” Sebastian was holding him, holding him in his arms like he was Jim’s mother. He was nothing of the kind. He was nothing. “I know you said not to wake you for four hours but you were thrashing and I couldn’t risk it.”

Sebastian was shaking, looking slightly pale. Jim reached up like he was about to caress his cheek, but raked his short nails into Sebastian’s skin from the edge of his eyebrow to halfway down his cheek so blood welled up before Seb hissed and jerked his head away.

Good.

Good. But he had to be sure.

He drew his hand back and slapped hard, right over where he had drawn Sebastian’s skin up under his fingernails. For that, Sebastian grabbed his wrist and held it away but Jim was too relieved to make a murmur about manhandling.

“Stop that! What is wrong with you?” he was snarling, his cheek marked by stubble, the pink print from Jim’s hand and thin blurred lines of blood.

“This is real. I had to be sure. I could only hurt you in real life.”

“You’re going into shock,” Seb was tucking him close, bones fitting together. Braced him while he vomited on the tasteful Persian rug and pulling his blanket around Jim’s shoulders afterward.

“Do you feel better at least Boss, did the sleep help?”

Jim laughed, it sounded like the sound of someone who was dying.

“Sebastian, tell me you-”

“What?”

“Nothing. _Nothing.”_


	8. Chapter 8

PROTECT

John fought to the surface, blinking at the side of Sherlock’s face; there was a pink mark there, like he’s been hit with a spoon. Sherlock is holding a spoon. Wooden spoon. What?

_HURTSHURTSHURTS_

“I told you he’s alive! I told you Mycr-”

John went back under.

 

Poison, Poison and it was burning him.

 

Hide. Need to hide.

_No more, please. Its eating…_

Too deep. Help, I’m too deep.

 

“I don’t even know what he’s supposed to be!” said a voice high and panicky, “or even a- a zoologist or- or- or a crypto-zoologist. How am I supposed to help?”

“He’s not an _animal,”_ said a familiar voice, a deep rumbling voice, angry and sandpaper grating, balancing on the razor edge of absolute rage. “And he’s a better man than you’ll ever be- don’t _touch me,_ so help me- Mycroft inform your _minions_ they are not to _touch me.”_

“He’s cells are insane, I can’t even describe his blood, it’s like there were a few hundred different donors that all pumped into him. I-”

 _“Fix him,”_ said a voice, The Voice and John struggled up briefly to rise but he couldn’t, he couldn’t- Sherlock. Sherlock was about to lose his temper, but he mustn’t, Lestrade would get mad and the witness won’t talk. His hand reached out weakly, all the strength of a bird fallen out of the nest and fell atop Sherlock’s long pale fingers.

That’s enough, he meant to say but it wouldn’t come out.

 

It _hurt._

 

“John,” said the Voice, soft and undeniable. Sherlock’s voice. It hurts John that Sherlock sounds like this, subdued. Concerned. Sherlock doesn’t do subdued or concerned.

Sherlock was far away, but the voice always connected them. Just like comfort and companionship and laughter did. And the hearts. This hurts more than when John was shot and he had the obsession while on the heavy medication he had to take to stay sane that there was sand in the wound, sewn inside and it was going to wear him down internally until he started bleeding to death and no one would know. He knew it was in his head, that it wouldn’t kill him, that there was nothing inside him, but at times it like it drove him mad.

That’s what this was like now, it was in his head. But this time it was enough to kill him. 

And he had failed the Hunt too. He felt the subtle shame of a hardworking man who’d left things unfinished.

The Voice caught him again, like a needle pulling golden thread and stitched him up close to the surface that wasn’t so mad and poisoned and pained.

“I’m coming John, whatever you need to do to let me in, you need to do it.”

John didn’t understand, didn’t think this was a good idea. But he trusted. 

“I don’t even know if it’s possible. Or if it is and it’s no use anyway because you can’t hear me. Or if it is and you can and you’ll eat me.” There was a long pause and Sherlock’s voice whispered husky and deep and it reverberates through John’s bones. “I never should have done it. I never should have done any of this. If I had just shot him instead of being selfish none of this would have ever happened and you’ll be safe. Are you mad at me John? Are you furious inside your head? Will you rip me apart until I’m nothing but red steam and unrepentant bone? Because I am. I am unrepentant. I was bored John. You can’t understand what it’s like. But I don’t think I want to pay this price. Not this. I was only going to pay with myself.”

There were quick, drip, drip, drips against John’s skin. Piercing silver and John was mad. He was bloody furious that Sherlock would risk himself like that, be so stupid. But he wouldn’t hurt Sherlock, other than maybe a swift kick. Two, maybe, for luck.

“I’m coming John and maybe I’ll never wake up again, let you carry by bones around inside your head for the rest of your life. Think of me fondly then. I’m coming.”

_I won’t hurt you, John thinks. Never. Never. I’ll take you past the water but I’ll never drown you._

 

Sherlock stepped through the pool doors, the scent of chlorine, strong and burning. Stepping from the dark hallway to a blue, grey and red world lit in ugly florescent. Everything was bleached here, pale and nearly colorless. It made his eyes go oddly blank, too public, too bare, too much/little data. Too much sensory information. Analysis going wild and impotent. The heavy half hollow echo of the door as he let it fall shut behind him. His feet making soft knocks against the floor. He turned leisurely; scanning the viewing balcony above him to be sure it was abandoned. That was where they’ll be. Moriarty. Above him on the balcony looking down at him. He saw no one. That doesn’t mean anything.

“I brought you a little getting to know you,” he started and then paused, eyes narrowing, “present.” Something isn’t right, this isn’t right. It hovered on the tip of his mind, blocking any other word that might come traipsing out of his mouth. A thought slid across his mind like mercury beading over a table top, _Oh, that’s right. I’m dreaming._ “Oh this is good John, this is _spectacular._ You are _extraordinary.”_

This was about the time John should step out and Sherlock would see the coat and have that awful epiphany, because what else could it be but semtex? Surely not betrayal, Sherlock had known even then, bone deep that John wouldn’t betray him. Not unless it was for his own good. But John wasn’t stepping out from anywhere.

Well then. There’s no reason Sherlock couldn’t go to his death like a man.

A quick flip through his memory and Sherlock took long careful steps to the stall that John had emerged from all those months ago. In the stall, curled up in the corner, was a little blonde boy in a green parka clutching what appeared to be an old scratched bugle to his chest with one arm like it was a teddy bear. The other arm hangs limply at his side, the turned up cup of his palm filled with something too black to be blood. Sherlock made a little soughing sound, his arms hanging limply. Sherlock breathed out a shocked little, _“John.”_

John’s eyes blink, foggy with pain, and John, John as a child, a defenseless child, tried to smile. He stared up at Sherlock with his big dark eyes, hazy with pain. The child’s eyes were so wide and so trusting it stabbed him.

“Well,” Sherlock said, staring at him, arms hanging limply. “This is a turn up.”

 

This time Sherlock doesn’t rip anything off anyone. He eased the fluffy parka open (no semtex this time, no need with the threat inside) and slid the coat off gingerly one arm. When it was time for the second sleeve the stench of necrotic flesh and blood nearly made him gag, even though logically he knew he couldn’t really smell anything. That this was some kind of psychological representation of John’s mental state, an illusion that far exceeded anything he had considered, is a thought truly awe inspiring. John collapsed against him weakly for a moment panting. The hair of John’s head was soft and fine and stirred with Sherlock’s half panicked breaths. Sherlock set two fingers rest against the silky soft hair, his palm curving down to press against the soft mouse like vulnerability of his ear. Something had to be done, John realized the time for resting was over about the same time Sherlock did. He fell back to lean, hissing in pain, against the stall wall. Blood and black sludge soak the cardigan and button up beneath the parka, and Sherlock wasn’t sure what to do, how to treat this.

“A child John?” his hand still bracketed John’s small round head. John blinked back at him, trying to keep him in focus.

John clung to his bugle (military, standard issue, seen action, polished daily) with one hand, looking seriously at Sherlock, “Dinit want you to be afraid.”

“Oh John. Quite a mess,” Sherlock’s other hand hovered in the air above the red-brown and black stain sprawled across John’s shoulder. The scent made him almost want to gag, but as a man who spent a good deal of his professional life working with corpses and crime scenes he had excellent self-control when it came to his gag reflex. “What do I need to do?”

“Get it out,” and there was the sound of grownup John’s mouth, oddly incongruent on a child’s tongue, the sound of a field medic’s voice. “Its poison and it’ll contaminate me. I’ve been keeping it out of my blood stream, but if I weaken too much, it’ll get into my heart and I’ll be done.”

The cardigan came off first, the bugle held between John’s knees, and thrown off to the side. Next was the little plaid button up. It was sticking to the wound; that much was obvious. Pulling it off would pull off any scabbing, but it was unavoidable. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Child John raised his eyebrows at him, “Sherlock, life is, more often than not, pain. You’re sympathy will help me get through.”

When Sherlock ripped the cloth away John screamed high and shrill; a reedy little sound, over top a man’s bellow and a canine howl.

He pressed John’s back to the floor, the small soft body shivering against the cool tile. His bare shoulder was swollen obscenely with poison like buboes. _How appropriate,_ he thought. “I’m going to try and press it out now.” John’s mouth swung and his teeth, too big and sharp to be a child’s, caught on Sherlock’s scaphoid and radius. He didn’t break the skin, just used a sharp pressure, holding himself to something. Sherlock struck his fist into the wound and watched the poison bubble out.

“My dear John,” Sherlock said tenderly, John’s teeth kissed dimples into the skin of his wrist in response. The strongest urge hit to lift the child, cradle him against his chest, press him up under his rib cage like a modified Heimlich, let them share the poison. “Bite as hard as you need to. My marrow is yours, do be careful of my fingers though, will you? If you leave me alive, I’d like to be able to play the violin still.”

Little tears like stars squeezed out of the corners of John’s eyes as Sherlock struck the skin (there was the sound of flesh striking flesh, boxing class all over again) black poison bursting out like blood splatter. “We can do this John. I can do this.”

 

“I’m not sorry,” Sherlock said slowly.

John giggled, all teeth, and shook his head. John’s shoulder wasn’t as swollen as it was before, the cluster of wounds stand out like black stars, still oozing. “Course not.”

“No one asked me,” Sherlock hissed, he was blinked something quick as a bird’s heart, “I never got any say in the matter.”

“Course,” the boy agreed.

This somehow makes Sherlock even tighter wound, irrational, irrational. He opened the conversation in the first place. “Now I’m supposed to be responsible for all this? Of you?”

“You don’t own me,” the little boy smiled up at him with his mouth, small like a secret. Keeping his lips unobtrusive as a rabbit’s so no one would know underneath was written freak. The little boy, his little John Watson, was soft bodied with lingering baby fat and warm and nonthreatening. There was no expectation; Sherlock could love him without being pinned with romantic expectancy sharp through his lung until he floundered and drowned in it. This was good and true and innocent enough. It was clean. He wanted to curl around this tiny John Watson and protect him. Be brother to him; adore him as brothers loved the soft, talcum scented, caterpillar shape of their baby brothers.

He had a sudden pinch of sympathy for Mycroft.

“What if I want to?”

John shook his round genial head so it rolled back and forth, “I’m a wild thing. I need to Hunt. I don’t belong for long in house for people or in cages with bedrooms and kitchens, I’ll batter myself to death without the Hunt, I’d drown in the silence. It would fill me until I could breathe. Might as well pour cement down my throat.”

“You’re poetic like this,” Sherlock pressed hard on John’s small shoulder again and had images of olive presses. The black poison _presses_ out of the soft skin of John’s shoulder and flows across the tile to the stall’s drain.

“It’s the lot of my folk,” he turned his head to blink at the wall. “It hurts.”

“I’m trying,” Sherlock pressed harder, gritting his teeth, his wrist aching with the pressure. “You know I have to get it out.”

In the end Sherlock found a pumice stone hiding around the fuzzy zone his peripheral vision started to fade to black and burnished off the damaged tissue as thin as onion paper and then John, his John was well again.


	9. Chapter 9

“There,” Sherlock said. “Finished.” The flat of his hand is an unacceptable handkerchief, but Sherlock tries anyway to clean up John’s little face, tears and sweat catching on his fingertips. It’s not something he’s tried before. Wiping away tears with his own hands. John smiled at him so wide, his eyes so sweet and gimlet. His little teeth were sharp as stars, startling white and so delicately pointed. “All done now.”

John grinned and his little arms came up and pushed. Sherlock flew back, two small hands gripping his shoulders and a big grin before he tumbled head over foot and landed hard on his back on the tile, a weight pressing against his sternum. It was a hard hit, but it didn’t really hurt, just stun him a little. When he was able to open his eyes he was met by the eager little face of a coney peering down at him good humouredly with black eyes and a playful twitch of his tall stickup ears. He’d recognize that look anywhere. Sherlock grinned up at him, at coney John, but the grin was cut short when he saw the square of his fold up magnifying glass in coney John’s mouth.

“Hey! That’s my eye!” he tried for authoritative, but his voice was too high, too light.

Too young.

He looked in panic at his fingers, the small narrow fingers of a child, instead of the long strong ones trained up to violin strings and test tubes. He could feel the softness of his fingertips a little boy’s lack of blemish. Except there are the little red spots from where he used to compulsively pick at his cuticles. The only difference was that Mummy despaired of dressing him in suits; his experiments eventually started getting the better of the laundry staff.

Oh my.

What would Mummy say if she-

Wait.

“Oh, you’re brilliant John; you can go all the way down, can’t you?”

Coney John scratched his ear in consideration and leapt to the tile with the click of his claws. Sherlock shifted awkwardly, he had forgotten what it was like to be this light.

“Where are you going?” Sherlock sat up, trying to get used to child proportions again. “That is my eye, isn’t it? I will be wanting it.”

There was a twitch of the ears that said quite clearly, _It could be dangerous._

 

Sherlock gave chase because John did have his eye and that can’t go unchased, can it? He laughed wildly tumbling with coney John who was very careful with the sharp claws on his strong back feet as to not scratch Sherlock and very careful with magnifying glass held in his sharp teeth. But soon John slipped it back into Sherlock’s pocket because it wasn’t needed anymore. “John! John!” Sherlock breathed out, fresh and curious again. Giggling into the sleeve his over-sized coat. All his clothes are a bit over-sized, Mummy kept buying clothes that were a little too big so that Sherlock could grow into them, but he hasn’t yet so everything was still loose and sliding. “Mycroft showed me where some strawberries are!”

John leapt happily around his feet.

“And- and I found a nest. With real eggs, not like the kind from the fridgerator. We can look but Mycroft says we mustn’t touch because then their Mummy will be sad.” He put his small hands on his hips and looked seriously down at John, small dark eyebrows coming together.

But really he thought, _Like me, please like me._

John twitched his ears in affirmation at him, smiling a big crooked rabbity smile.

“Brilliant!” Sherlock’s grin split open his small face and he threw his arms up in the air because sometimes he felt so much inside he just _had_ to or else he might burst. He waved his arms and laughed because it was so nice to have a friend, someone who was different, like he was, and wasn’t angry at Sherlock because he knew where everyone was hiding for hide and seek and he knew how to read big kid books and because he figured out his maths.

Coney John leapt high in the air with his powerful back feet and they ran and ran and laughed through the forest. It was perfect, absolutely wonderful, running and happy. And it was good because when Sherlock found a really brilliant leaf or a really spectacular hole in the ground John would look at it with him and twitch his ears at Sherlock as if to say, _brilliant._ And that made Sherlock so happy, like he had a real, for real friend. He knew that John, a quick little coney with his smart ears and his sharp claws and his strong back legs felt the same. That he felt stronger and fiercer than all the other coneys. Like he could take on a fox and maybe he _wanted_ to take on a fox like sometimes Sherlock had to throw his arms in the air, even if they were at church.

They were the same.

Maybe they were even friends.

 

But boys grew up; Sherlock became long legged and coltish before he could even think on what was happening, childhood slipping away as if in a dream. His arms going all elbows and his legs, all knees. He was awkward and hormonal, confused by some of the things the boys his age do, the way they chase after girls. And they disliked him, even his teachers disliked him, but if the teacher was wrong, shouldn’t he say something? And everything was awkward and different, before when he needed to run and move and get all the energy out people smiled and said he was cute, and sweet, and _you know now they are at that age,_ now they frowned at him, and hissed at be to be still.

Mycroft doesn’t even like him anymore, the great lazy tosser, throwing Sherlock out to the wolves _for his own good,_ which is a betrayal that tasted like wormwood in Sherlock’s mouth and made his face contort in contempt and scorn. Learn to be like them, Mycroft said, act like them, so Sherlock tried and tried. Now the energy, without an outlet, had solidified into something razor sharp and letters started appearing like hateful ticker tape until Sherlock wanted to put his eyes out.

He could try going to Mummy or Mycroft, but he was miserable, bitter, wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. What he really wanted was to run away. Run, run, _run_ faster than disappointment, faster than little white letters, faster than pain and outsideness and hunger and an intellect like a two edged sword that cut back at him as much as it cut others. He had to run but he didn’t know how. He needed to move faster.

He remembered he wasn’t alone.

There was a horse, coltish and stocky in nearly pony like proportions, but that was okay, Sherlock needed endurance and much as speed. He distrusted everyone and everything, but this was little brother John, who Sherlock had healed and coney John who had played.

He sniffed and pulled his coat tight around himself.

He was smart, smarter than all those idiots, _he didn’t need them,_ liars and, and betrayers all…

Horse John clamped the lapel of his coat to pull him closer impatiently.

“I-” Sherlock started to say imperiously looking into Horse John’s black eyes. “Let’s run away. Run as fast as you can John.”

He boosted himself bareback and threw him arms around John’s neck. “Just go before it gets us.”

 

They ran very far and very fast, running away from the frustration and disappoint, racing from the sudden cutting knowledge the world wasn’t as kind as he had believed it. He kept his face tight to John’s mane and let’s muscle carry him until the anguish fades. Some of it was hormonal stability, some of it was callous, mostly it was finding a niche they couldn’t kick him out of. He was invaluable to the Yard, he made himself that way as soon as he got rid of the cocaine, pointless, needless now. And he was tired of running, tired of being prey; it wasn’t natural for him. Not really. He was ready to give chase.

He could feel John shift beneath him, change and so stocky and deadly. There was a whistle and a rocket zipped past and he was in Afghanstan but…

_Please, oh my_

he wasn’t Sherlock now, he was John because this hadn’t been about him this whole time he’d been…

_Stop, I can’t- I can’t do this-_

In John’s head and John was trying to help him understand why and what he was because John was different, John was different like Sherlock was different. But John was also _wrong._ He was in danger because of it. Because he was Wilde and didn’t belong here he belonged a thousand years ago or very far away, or in nightmares but not anywhere man can touch because Sherlock was screaming and throwing up and screaming again because Sherlock saw it all, but without something to focus on, John _felt_ everything.

 

 _The military was the perfect place for a thing like John,_ Sherlock thought with his face pressed to the thick blond hair of John’s side; he could just feel the shape of John beneath the dog-wolf pelt. John made a soft woofing sound of sympathy and laid his big head over Sherlock’s ankles.

At the end of it John was a thing that needs pack, purpose, relationship because without a limited number to focus on he got diffused. Shot through from every direction with the need to belong to care for, to play. In the military he had a unit and his responsibility was the unit and they welcome that attention. It was expected, which was what John wanted, not to be taken for granted, but to be so tied to something that there was no more thought for his saving his fellow’s life as his own. As long as he could maintain that, there was equilibrium. Sherlock imagined a string of lovers, the women dragged through 221B; he imagined that John needed them, needed to hold their shoulders, their hands, to take care of them to comfort himself. To sooth the yearning to belong. How perfect then Sherlock must have been with his countless expectations until the line between Sherlock and John had smudged them into a single thing. John’s pleasure at his cases, his devotion to Sherlock’s work, even his occasional affection for Mycroft but only as far as necessary in maintaining Sherlock’s peace.

John lapped up his tears, rubbing his soft cheek fur against Sherlock’s face to sooth him while Sherlock huddled with his face against his side. “I’m not-” he had to take a deep breath. “I’m not used to feeling this much.”

What? He supplemented in his mind, he and John had conversed enough he had John’s tone and turn of phrase perfectly burnt into his head.

“Compassion, concern. I’ve trained myself…”

He had to stop himself again and instantly Afghanistan was quiet, the dust was faded, everything was still. Memory set on pause.

“I’ve trained myself to pull away so that I can perform well. So that I can do the Work. It hurt to care about everyone and everything all of a sudden, to know things for sure when I amused myself with grey before. I didn’t know that I was good. Or have you just made me that way?” It made sense, simple chemistry. Biology. If an alien organism is introduced to a new body, and was stronger than the body’s defenses must cave to it. Therefore if John was introduced, if John was working as a sort of filter for his very blood, for his hearts than his body must therefore take on some characteristics of John as well. He must, according to the laws of science receive a gradual build up of good inside him.

John chuffed. Half laughing, still worried.

Sherlock elbowed him with irritation, twisting into the curl of John’s big wolfy body, heavy muscle beneath thick fur. “It was just a lot,” he knew he sounded like a pouting child, but he couldn’t help it. “It was only a shock. And it hurt a little, I didn’t like it.”

 

John was laughing at him now, but gently keeping tight around Sherlock, tail flopping peaceably. Not what you’d expect in a war zone, but then his flatmate was currently a big blond wolf, so perhaps it wasn’t the biggest sticking point. As John’s head turned something glinted around John’s neck and Sherlock’s body went tense and furious. His tags, John’s tags, they had collared him. They had collared John.

His fingers, pale and white as bone against the gold of John’s coat, flexed into the fur and pulled out the looping ball chains out and into the sunlight. “They’ve chained you John,” he could feel his skin tense and tighten across his face with the force of his snarl. “Why did you let them chain you up?”

“I’m not chained Sherlock,” said Wolf John.

“What is this?” Sherlock snarled, it was like he had been chained himself, as if he had a collar around his own neck. It was _unnatural._ All his funny feelings of _brother, runner, hunter, just like me_ mixed up and his fist tightened so the small silver beads cut into his palm.

“I just learned how to bite on command, just like you did.”

“You are a wild thing; it’s not right for you to be _domesticated.”_ He felt like he was about to cry which was wrong because it was not something he did.

John grinned his dear crooked grin, “Do I look domesticated to you?” He didn’t, he looked like a thing that could bite right through sheet metal, something to make his drugged hallucinations upon the moors of Baskerville whimper and run. Teeth all white and bright with potential and fur so thick it was bullet proof, eyes bright and not brilliant, not needing to be, because they know people, know feelings and love, real love, not the made an abomination by marketing, stripped naked and painted sexy, they know fear. John knows fear, and pain and compassion that was so intent it ripped across his hematoencephalic barrier until his brain bled with it, uncomprehending. John nudged his cheek, his bent down head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would hurt you to see that. To see me.”

His ears cocked in concern and they’re a brilliant poppy red inside, before they folded the right way and shadow obscures the shade.

“You knew I was different!” Sherlock screamed at him, and he was crying but he can’t help it because he was frightened. “You know I don’t understand it! How I struggle with sentiment and, and saying the right things. I still struggle, even though I… You know it John. That I can’t-! Oh.” He interrupted himself, head popping up from the protective cave of wolf John’s body. War dog. Hunting hound. Whatever he was. Irrelevant. “John, would you say I’m a better man than Moriarty?” he was smiling smug, found a new trick, but half the magic’s in the presentation.

John bristled delightfully all over, dangerous and dark. Sherlock laughed in delight, cuddling his face against John’s thick fur. He wasn’t normally one for cuddling, but it felt good for he and John to be together. Once again, lack of expectation freed him. Comforted. “If I have difficulty dealing with your… overblown protective _benevolence_ how do you think it will sit with him?” He smiled his slow curling smile, the one that had, with the addition of John’s benevolence, a secret snick like a stiletto between the ribs. “I would wager quite a lot that if dear Jim has ever felt compassion, it was so long ago he’s forgotten the pain of it.”

“That is how I’ll get him,” John said so that Sherlock could hear his answering smile.

“That’s how you get him.”

 

When John woke up he’s in hospital. Well, not in hospital proper, it smelled odd and everything was pale and sturdy and battened down, like it might have need to survive a bomb blast. There was someone arguing on the other side of his door, a rectangular interruption in the blankness of the walls. He hoped Sherlock hadn’t had to spend his time here, time was very precious, each second bought dearly. He hated the idea of Sherlock being forced to sit in this room where he would be bored and miserable. One of the men arguing on the other side of the door was Sherlock, he could recognize Sherlock’s voice even from a mumble and Sherlock wasn’t mumbling. But he couldn’t hear the other person. The room had the muffled feel of soundproof walls, so Sherlock was probably arguing with Mycroft again.

He sighed and shifted in the bed and the door flew open, “John! You’re awake! How are you feeling?”

“Fine, tired. Are you alright?” Sherlock sprung into the room, narrow fingers crawling over John’s arms and shoulders. Checking him over while John submited patiently. He knew the feeling.

Mycroft got as far as stepping one foot in the door and letting the tip of his umbrella tap against the tile when Sherlock spun and snarled at him, “Go away Mycroft. We don’t need your meddling anymore.”

Gritting his teeth together at the force necessary to sit up again, John sorted himself, got himself upright, “It’s time to stop that Sherlock.”

“He said you’re too dangerous, he wants to separate us,” Sherlock turned to his brother, “Everything’s fixed now Mycroft. You can’t separate us.”

“So you keep reminding me brother dear.”

“Can’t you two be kind to each other?” John covered his eyes, scrubbing away the grit.

“There is not benefit to kindness in one’s life,” Mycroft said. “Compassion has no reward.”

John snorted out a quick laugh.

“Something is funny Dr. Watson?”

“Compassion is necessary. Everyone must either pay the cost of being alive or live dead.”

“I live just fine,” Mycroft snapped back. Those were the Holmes brothers snapping at everyone and everything. Quick as whips.

“Do you?”

“You have no right to judge my life with some self-help platitudes about how we should all hold hands and be good friends.”

That got a tilt down of John’s head, the unsubtle, not quite human shift into minor aggression, “You never had to grow up Mycroft. Never had to fight for anything. Never had to pay full price for anything in your life,” John tilted his head at Mycroft, his eyes all big and dark. It was hard to tell his expression, where he was looking exactly, whether he was being sanctimonious or mocking. John sounded angry, but when Mycroft looked at Sherlock he appeared calm and only mildly annoyed. “The closest you got, I’m sure was with Sherlock. But even then you were safe. No undue acts of compassion. The frailty of genius is, as always, that it can convince itself of anything. I don’t need to tell you you’re unhappy. You know it. And you’ll defend how miserable you are, won’t you? You’ll fight tooth and nail to convince everyone you’re right, that you know best.”

“Perhaps that’s because I do, your perspective is unique, I will give you that, but that doesn’t mean that you’re correct either.”

“As someone who deals quite regularly, and if I might say, effectively, in lives, I think I have some authority on the subject. I’ve bought myself, and I bought your brother too. I’m not trying to replace anyone.”

“Let’s refine your use of the pronoun since we’re being all honest and forthright. Let’s really get down to it. You meant to say, ‘I’m not trying to replace you.’ But you are, rather neatly. A little talk about morality here, a little joint possessiveness there and no one else is necessary but you two merrily orbiting each other. Is that kind then, Doctor? Is that your compassion?” Mycroft’s voice was cheery, tripping and trembling over each jolly consonant.

“I don’t want to replace you. I’ve never _tried_ to replace you.”

“But you could!” Mycroft’s voice broke. Sherlock jolted like he’s been shot, seeing real emotion, real anguish from his brother.

“I could lop my leg off. Or blow up 221B. Or stop drinking tea. But I won’t. I wouldn’t do any of those things.”

“And I do get some choice in the matter?” Sherlock groused, trying to get his footing back under him. “I am still capable of thinking for myself. Death, temporary as it was, has not given me any brain damage.”

John narrowed his eyes at him, “That’s yet to be proven.”

“Ha. Ha. You’re so funny John.”

“So if he told you never to see me again you wouldn’t do what he said?”

“He doesn’t _own me,”_ Sherlock’s fingers twitched for his Strad, John could watch them dancing over an invisible neck. “If he did, which I doubt given the annoying pressure he keeps putting on us to _’get along,’_ I don’t have to do what he says. I usually don’t.”

“That’s the truth,” John fell back again; he must have fallen into some sort of coma, so he had been sleeping, but he felt exhausted. Sherlock’s hand had been on his shoulder pressing him back down onto the bed.

“Don’t have a row John, you just woke up,” his voice had shifted into that tone that made John relax, sit still and go calm. “Besides I’ve only got the one brother.”

“Don’t wander off, I want to go home,” John stretched and resettled in his skin. How feel it must feel to shift and stretch in one’s head and then be trapped in flesh again.

Sherlock’s hand moved, curled in John’s sheet, “Regular sleeping, not dream sleeping.”

That got an annoyed look, but John seemed to agree, “Blood tomorrow, rest tonight.”


	10. Chapter 10

All things must rest. All of nature must bow its head to exhaustion.

Jim was no exception. He was so very worn down, like a shoe worn too long, clinging desperately to its tacks. It was a simple shift; he bowed slightly, leaning forward half an inch. Moran had only left for a moment, the first time he hadn’t been chewing caffeine pills and keeping watch with his boss. He saw that whatever the boss dreamed has changed him, struck him hard against the kidneys. Still able to fight, but hurting.

The loss of his eye was not taken well.

The boss must stay awake, which meant Moran must stay awake and attend. He did, but for a short time when he did no more than look away. When he returned, not twenty seconds later, his boss was dead. He would kill the men he sat at watch and stood looking at the body of his boss, eyes wide, shocked. The boss, Jim, had cried before he died. The tears were drying on his face.

Sebastian sat and stayed watch over his dead boss, still sitting in his chair and getting stiller.

He didn’t know what to do.

 

Before Sebastian returned. Before he sat and watched, a wake for a man that would receive no other mourning, Jim had a dream. He sat, back against a low wall between Davis and Murray whose face was

(what is that what is that its cutting me)

cheery and happy, covered in dust, just like the rest of them, working his gum round and round his mouth. Jim was always in a hurry here, although often he hurry upped and waited. But it was okay, doable, as long as he stayed ready and had good men to

(what is that what is that it’s too big it’s too big in his chest pressing up its going to break his ribs from the inside out what is that)

talk with a little, even if it was something as dumb as comparing Days of Our Lives and Coronation Street.

“Medic!” a voice shouted over the radio and

(stop stop just please stop hurting if I could id take it away id take it myself just stop) Jim was screaming he couldn’t stop screaming. And Jim was burning, he was bursting and it wouldn't stop. People shouldn't feel this way as he clawed at his face, at his flak jacket over his heart; this was not what people should feel like. He panted, teeth bared, at the unforgiving sun staring down and he hated it, which was new because the hate was not merely distaste at the disgusting, _boring_ regularity of the world, but he felt pained, _wounded_ inside himself like he'd been cut up and emptied out. It was raggedy inside, rough edged and aching, it was insufferable. He clawed as if he could scrape out the hole in his chest, breaking him in, making him bigger on the inside and he was not meant to be that big because it was crawling up inside him like corrosive mold and it was touching his mind, his wonderful razor sharp mind and it was eating it.

(what is that)

(what is it doing to me)

Jim turned to Murray who was still on a bit of a high from the letter he got from his fiancé,

(happiness pride for you my friend that youve found and conquered that youre so pleased with yourself brother comrade mate soldier shoulder on shoulder to shoulder its burning me up burning my heart out I hope you live forever how many wont how many fiancés will cry soon if it meant you marrying hale and healthy I would too big to fit youre breaking my rib why do my eyes feel as heavy and the stone in my face why am I smiling without being told)

Jim’s head burst open, burning and he couldn’t hold it. It was too big and it hurt. Bill nodded sobering and hefted his kit up; no one was supposed to shoot down medics. Well, theoretically. But they did which was a cheap trick since medics had carved into their brains

(pressure I need pressure here now please stop bleeding you look scared and your mum will cry)

to heal and protect . They would run into danger sometimes if there’s a man there.

Jim stumbled.

“Watson! You good?” Murray shouted over his shoulder.

“Fine. All fine.” Cover fire and that was good, shooting people was good he knew that. His eyes, they catch the glint of dust and bullets as fire was opened. The two of them ran and Jim knelt by the soldier down and hefted him up and Jim clawed at his flack vest over his heart because this was too much. His nails were breaking and his brain was bursting and there was wetness on his face, he threw his head back and howled until he couldn’t. Until his voice was a low, low sound scratching against itself, like wind through high grass.

And he was crying.

He was crying, head thrown back, staring at the Afghani sky like some saint in the stunned, shattered moment of epiphany. Seeing everything and nothing at once. Vistas incomprehensible, darkness that he could not comprehend with its low and lowing paralysis, white hot burning swirls of light leaping across mountains. The whole great triumph of the human condition, the glory of humanity, the conception of the worth of every human soul, _empathy,_ burst into him like a mortar blast and shattered him, ruined him. Left him on his back, in the dust and blood, the whole world shocked and stunned by the weight of this revelation. He laid there spread eagle, staring without blinking, he didn’t have the strength to blink, until the man came, the good man came, the good captain.

It hurt, all those emotions hurt, caring hurt, it ripped through him, compassion and mercy and pity and they hurt, blasting through him - a speed train covered in sandpaper. He was bleeding out inside from the feelings. He looked at the good man, just looked at him.

“Numbers can’t stop bullets Jimmy,” he said, the sun catching and glinting against his golden hair, the buttons of his uniform. “And cruelty is no match for love. How did you like it? The taste, the brush against your brain.”

When he looked at the good man it was in horror. If that was a brush, if _that_ was a brush… His face had cracked open and now he was just a man with a big brain. A man who was currently being Hunted.

Blood and sand stuck to the side of Jim face, wet in places and dry and peeling like the skin of a snake in others.

Jim gasped a small precise gasp, like a scale of beryl on his tongue, as the Browning snugged into his ribs.

“Please,” he begged. “Please. Mercy. Be merciful and destroy me.” He clung to the leg closest to him, it burnt him dark and fast, but he didn’t care, he was too broken to care. He remembered this man’s name was John, “John,” he begged, wide eyes staring. “Good John, beloved John. Have mercy, please, _please,_ please, destroy me.”

John leaned very close to his ear, close enough to bite it off and whispered to Jim, “I dedicate this heart to Sherlock Holmes.”

 

Sherlock stood, a black cut out against the bright sunlight coming through the window. John looked at him, the shape of him and smiled. He was groggy, not quite all awake yet, and when he stretched on the sofa the afghan Sherlock must have thrown over him slipped.

“I made you tea,” Sherlock said.

John smiled, pleased because Sherlock never made him tea and scratched at his ear a little. “You, make me tea?”

Sherlock turned, and now that John’s eyes were better adjusted he could see Sherlock’s face creased in thought, could see the tea set on the coffee table, see the Strad held gently in one hand and the bow held up, poised in the other like a rapier. “I am capable John. I had to make it for myself before you came along.”

“It worked, just like you said, brilliant as ever,” John took the cup, set the edge against his lip and blew gently so the steam bowed and fled.

“Are you alright?”

“Hmm?” John said, in the midst of a sip.

“Are you alright? Did he hurt you again?” the light coming through the windows was bright and lit up the specks of dust into tiny momentary suns.

“No Sherlock, I’m alright. It worked; it was too much for him. He didn’t hurt me.”

There was a sudden easing across his pale face and he set his violin under his chin. “I have been thinking a great deal John. A great deal. You will do two things for me. Later today will you go and speak to my brother. There are some things he’ll wish to speak to you about, I have things I need to do as well, but I know I can trust you to stay with him until I come get you. Second you will tell me something about Moriarty.”

“Certainly Sherlock, whatever you need.”

“Good. Now, will you look angry for me, angry and also a little shocked? Mostly shocked. If you please,” he ran his fingertips along the strings so they let out a soft hushed gasp nearly muted by the sound of the refrigerator humming in the kitchen and their breathing.

“I guess, why do you ask?”

“Because I’m going to start playing the violin.”

“What does that-?”

Sherlock interrupted with a long low scrape at his violin so it hummed in the air before playing. It was a quick song, John didn’t know that much about violins, but he knew it was a piece that took skill. It was beautiful and fast and it made John watch, watch and watch Sherlock twist his wrist and make the violin sing for him. He nearly missed Mrs. Hudson calling out.

“John dear, that’s beautiful, it sounds just like a real vio-”

Sherlock froze, his eyes jerked up as Mrs. Hudson stood in the door way, stared with an open mouth, her face stuck in shock, Sherlock’s own face was wide open and vulnerable every inch the little boy lost. “Mrs. Hudson…” he jerked and set his instrument aside as he took long quick steps to the door so he could catch her before she sagged down a little. She didn’t quite faint but she looked close to it.

“Sherlock. Sherlock Holmes. Bless my soul.”

“Yes Mrs. Hudson, yes it’s me. It’s me I’m back.”

“What? I don’t… Bring me to a chair dear bring me a seat.”

 

“Moriarty threatened to kill you,” Sherlock said kneeling, actually kneeling on the ground, beside Mrs. Hudson with one of her lovely soft hands between his own. “Several of the people I… cared about in fact. If I didn’t,” Sherlock looked away quickly hesitantly and John immediately recognized it as a sham, but only because he knew Sherlock so well, it was very, very good. “Do what he said, he would have his people kill you. So I faked my death, took him down with me and started to dismantle his organization. I had to do something, I couldn’t lose the people who…”

Mrs. Hudson laid one hand on top of his curls, “Oh dear, you poor dear. What have you been doing these three years?”

John stood in the kitchen, staring at the kettle and listening quietly.

“John has not done well,” she whispered to Sherlock and John listened. “He’s changed, I worry about him. I don’t like to be alone with him. Not that I thought he’d do anything to hurt me. It’s just- It must have been a shock for you to see him so different. But never you worry. Don’t you push him away. He’s taken care of me. He’s kept the house safe while you’ve been away. I’ve never had so much of an ounce of trouble. You just take care of him, he cares for you awfully.”

“I know Mrs. Hudson,” Sherlock’s voice was soft, incredibly gentle. “But he’s John. He’s still John and I’ll never be without him again if I can help it. He was very angry when I came back. I thought he wouldn’t forgive me. But he’s John, of course he did, and I’m never going to abuse that trust. I couldn’t bear it.”

“Tea’s ready,” John said, carrying the tray slowly and carefully.

“It’s nice to have you back Sherlock,” Mrs. Hudson put her arms around him. “It’s just so very nice. I just don’t know what to do having you back, the flat’s just stopped smelling of decomposition.”


	11. Chapter 11

After being led like an innocent into Mycroft’s study John sat patiently with his arm chair pulled closed to Mycroft’s.

“Sherlock said you wanted to talk to me?”

Mycroft looked vaguely unsettled, a sort of peeling around his edges. There were twelve men sitting in the study, some playing cards in the study, some seated with them by the tea service, one was reading on the widow seat, a few more were chatting by the door.

“Certainly John, I wanted to get you know better, we don’t really know each other well do we? Facts and figures maybe, but that’s hardly the same is it?”

Looking at the men, the twelve of them, spread around the study, John turned his dark eyes back to look at Mycroft and let the cup and saucer he was holding, with both hands like a school boy, shift. “What do you want to-?”

Three things happened then:

First, John’s head jerked to the left.

Second, John gasped and let go of the cup and saucer which both slipped off his lap leaving a tail like a comet in its wake, if comets perhaps had tails made of tea.

Third, John became furious.

The next thing that happened was that Mycroft wrapped his long fingers around John’s tense wrist.

After that twelve men reached to have their guns at the ready.

“John, John you need to stay with me.”

In response John bared all of his teeth and growled so that Mycroft felt it travel through his fingers up his wrist and his arm and his shoulder and his chest and all through the rest of his body so his face paled and his eyes widened and his teeth chattered together. One, twice, again his teeth clicked in his head, but he didn’t look go. If any of the twelve men lost control of their bladders no one mentioned it to anyone else.

When John tried again to pull his wrist free again Mycroft opened his mouth so a croak came out before he collected himself, “Stop John, stay here. You need to stay here.”

“Sherlock’s hurt. Someone hurt him.”

“He’s fine John, he’s okay.”

“He’s not!” John shouted, pulling.

“What would Sherlock say if you hurt me John, wouldn’t he be disappointed? Wouldn’t he be upset if you killed me, even if it was accidentally?”

John hid some of his teeth, eyes narrowed. “He’s. In. Distress.”

“He’s okay John, he’s fine, it’s alright. Sit down John.”

John pulled Mycroft’s hand up to his face so he could set his teeth on the elegant conglomeration of bones at Mycroft’s wrist. He set his teeth there and Mycroft could feel how very, very, very, very, very sharp John’s teeth were set against his wrist. He trembled, sitting in his three piece suit and his twelve men and his confidential government files hidden in the walls staring into the face of the thing that killed Moriarty.

Mycroft had never been afraid like this before.

Never stared his death in the face and known there was nothing he could do to fight back; this was not something he could shoot or stab or hit. This was nothing he could reason with, it was unsympathetic to rhetoric and debate. He was nearly powerless.

He had never known this before.

It was terrifying to be so small.

“Everyone leave,” he croaked and gripped a fistful of John’s jacket. “And close the door behind you.”

“Sir?” someone said, he wasn’t quite sure who his heart was going too fast. All twelve men filed out quickly, frightened and trembling.

He surged up to his feet, stood looming over John, using every inch to get right into John’s face, “You bite my hand off John Watson, bite right through. Take my whole arm, but you are not stepping one foot outside of this room until my brother comes for you because if you run to his rescue and pop up in the middle of New Scotland Yard everyone is going to know about you and then they will take you away and what will happen to my brother then? A life of running because you have to rip the throat out of everything that looks sideways at him?” he narrowed his eyes and growled back. “If keeping my brother safe means losing my hand, take it. Rip out my throat while you’re at it, because that’s the only way you’re leaving. Do we understand each other?”

John bared his teeth around Mycroft’s wrist and smiled a small secret smile. His teeth sprung open, releasing Mycroft after what seemed like so long. He stumbled back into his chair, suddenly soaked in sweat, trembling and weeping a little hysterically.

“Are you crying?”

“Yes,” Mycroft gasped. “But you’re still not leaving.”

 

Sherlock showed up with a fantastically growing bruise on one impossible cheekbone. He looked at the men sitting very quietly in the hall and then at his brother with his pink, tear tracked face drinking tea with his flat mate and chatting about Arsenal.

“What happened?” John said quickly, up on his feet to mind Sherlock’s face.

“Lestrade. I’m glad you didn’t kill my brother. And everything can go back to normal. Back to the way it was.”

“I wish you had taken me with you.”

“I thought it best you didn’t murder Lestrade in front of the Yard.”

John growled, but smiled a little, “Probably did you good anyway. I hope he won’t try it again.”

Long arms looped around John’s shoulders and squeezed him tight, “I’m okay John. I’m glad you didn’t kill Mycroft. After some thought at least.”

John snuffled once and hugged back tightly. “You’re officially alive again then?”

Striding over to pour himself a cup of tea and add half the sugar bowl, Sherlock tilted his head to he and Mycroft met eyes. His pale fingers flicked out to pull back the edge of Mycroft’s cuff and reveal a rosed bruise in a narrow half-moon shape. Taking a deep breath, Mycroft shook his head. “Good,” Sherlock breathed, then, “Yes John, everything can go back to normal now. Cases and running about London.”

“The way it should be,” John grinned at him, his mouth back to the proper shape.

“The way it is.”

 

There was an actual press conference, where John wore very large sunglasses and smiled very kindly, where it came out that Sherlock never died. Only dismantled the empire of the Hitler of crime. “It took,” Sherlock said, standing with John close by, “unorthodox means to fight an unorthodox criminal. Sometimes we must become a bit shadowy ourselves if we must fight someone in the shadows. I’m glad to be home in a safer London, and even a safer England. And glad that my efforts to destroy his organization, as well as the efforts of international police forces has paid off.”

After that there were pictures and Lestrade said a lot of things, but John and Sherlock snuck out the back door and invaded one of Dimmock’s crime scenes. John was very handy to have along Sherlock discovered. Whenever he wanted someone stupid to go away he just made John go stand by them. It was a unique experience for Sherlock, having such a tremendously useful John again, at crime scenes and also because he had to decide to withhold, to keep secrets forever, to not mention things that were curious or unusual. He couldn’t afford to borrow certain kinds of trouble anymore. Such as when Dimmock stood unperturbed right next to John and chatted about bloodyminded detectives, and how nice it much be for John to have Sherlock back, and about the Arsenal game.

Dimmock talked about his friend, also a police officer who he had grown up with, part of the reason he had joined the Yard “And so I kind of know what it’s like to have a good mate you worry about. I’m just glad the great git is back again. I don’t know what I’d do if Mike ever died.”

Sherlock looked at the two of them, both smaller, dense men, sweet faced with a firm gaze much more searching than one would first think. He thought maybe the reason Dimmock had joined the Yard didn’t have to do with the fraternal admiration he felt for Mike. The same way John didn’t join the army to travel. Sherlock thought he might know what Dimmock might do. He looked back at the corpse and let his eyes unfocus as he selected the mental mp3 of Dimmock and John’s conversation in his mind, right clicked and hit delete. Sometimes things just weren’t important.

The only thing that was important now was John and the Work.

Sherlock blinked back, he wasn’t sure what he had been thinking about, but he knew who the killer was, “It was the cook.”

“Mind the integrity of the scene!” Dimmock barked at him.

 

Two days after the press conference John woke suddenly, his ears perking up, his teeth bared. Sherlock shifted above him, the mattress murmuring and sighing.

“What do you intend to do?” Sherlock asked, sounding entirely like a prince. Calm and cool as a stone in a shallow stream.

“Not like that. He shouldn’t have died like that; you had no right to have him killed like that.” The man sounded steady as iron, dangerous and fierce, John’s soft growl vibrated up through the frame of the bed where his back is pressed. John could feel Sherlock’s smile. Here the sound of the paper cover of the book slid against the night stand, he could hear everything, here in the dark.

He could hear Sherlock’s bare heel drag along the sheet as he raised his knee, the pass of skin on skin as he stacked his hands on his knee. He could hear the man, the bad man, breathe, his lung moving, his shirt shifting with each breath. He could hear the man’s fist tighten and shift around the handle of a very big knife.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Sherlock said and it was the voice of warning, a solemn one and soft, “There’s a monster under my bed.”

 

“Stop fussing,” John told Sherlock who was sticking a plaster to the tiny cut across his cheek. “I’ve been in a war; a little cut isn’t going to kill me.”

“It was a big knife.”

“Sherlock.”

“If you had told me Moriarty had a pet henchman, someone who actually cared enough to avenge him we wouldn’t have had this problem in the first place.”

_“Sherlock.”_

“But then you never told me what it was like inside Moriarty’s head, what he did, what he said to you while you were fishing around in there.”

“I didn’t think you’d want to know.”

“Of course, why would I want to know Moriarty had a little pet who’d break into our flat to kill me in my sleep?”

“The insides of people’s heads, even bad people’s heads, it’s private. It’s not something to be shared. Sherlock stop, if that plaster is any more secure I won’t be able to get it off again. Sherlock, stop, you’re trembling, you’re going to give yourself a fit.”

“It was a very big knife,” Sherlock said in a very small voice.

“I’m perfectly fine.”

“Yes, yes of course. You have some breakfast; I’ll get rid of the rest of the body.”

“Are you alright now Sherlock?”

“Yes, you’re not allowed to ever be hurt again John. It alarmed me more than I anticipated.”

John sighed, his hand against Sherlock’s shoulders, “I can’t promise I won’t be, things happen, that’s just life. But you have to know I’ll never leave you.”

Sherlock trembled and he looks so sad.

 

There were a few more years, half a decade more in the streets of London, a few criminals that disappear mysteriously when they draw a gun on Sherlock with a little too much intent. After folders Mycroft delivered with names in them with the assurance that they all belonged to Not Very Nice people. And if a few mysterious heart attacks work for the good of the British nation, who was to complain? It was finally decided by all parties that the best thing to do is go to the country. People would start to notice soon that Sherlock wasn’t aging, wasn’t changing. At first he traveled with John to places where no one knew him and worked cases there, but that got to be too much. Sometimes Sherlock would do experiments on John (sheep, rabbits, cats, chickens, small children and cows were afraid of John; horses, snakes, spiders, hunting dogs, bees and the injured hawk Sherlock found were not afraid of John; John wasn’t sure that insects could be tested for fear but he sat patiently through all tests, the same way he patiently fetched tea and patiently insisted that Sherlock still needed sleep). The rest of their time was spent out playing with bees.

From time to time Mycroft would send John another list of names. John thought of Sherlock and never asked who the people were. Mycroft visited them too sometimes, he had lost some of his height and a lot of his hair; he was elegant and authoritative as ever. A regent in all but title, calmly engineering foreign policy, domestic government and the public lives of King William’s children as well as no doubt losing sleep over That Mess In Africa again. He’s growing whiter by the year, skin going paler, and eventually papery, the whiteness in his hair was attacking the darker strands first, turning him increasingly ginger, which Sherlock teased him about now, rather than his weight. The aging really started on the cusp of what was promising to be World War III but ended up merely blooming into a swath of warmongering across Asia and a nasty cold that never reached as far as France and probably wasn’t a biological weapon. The deaths due to heart problems of several leaders had nothing to do with anything.

The inescapable truth was Mycroft was growing older. His job wasn’t helping. While Mycroft bent the world to his will, tying everything together with little knots of information his little brother still appeared thirty three years old and looked mournfully at the shoulders that once carried him slowly slope with care and the iron grip of time pressing down on him. When he came to visit Mycroft put his long fingered hand on John’s graying head and smiled at him with something like real affection. “Take care of Sherlock.”

“Always,” John replied fervently. “Always.”

Sherlock put few wide streaks of white in his hair, so there was only a little black left, for the funeral and never not too close to anyone, hiding behind his collar and sloping himself so he appears to be aging. Watching Sherlock bent over and creaking, John could almost imagine he was in his very early seventies, Sherlock always was a good actor. They had planned, for Sherlock a glorious fake death that everyone thought was real (as opposed to his real death that everyone thought was fake) on the ride there to keep Sherlock’s mind off things. The brothers had become very close in later life. John looked at the painted on age spots on Sherlock’s hands and was sorry for him. It was a very grand funeral, several PMs speak and Antigone, who was once Anthea, stared hard at the two of them for half of the ceremony. They had gone to Lestrade’s funeral as well, watching his son, who looked like he could be his father’s twin stand and very carefully give his speech. Laying each word out like pebbles on a beach.

“I wish you hadn’t made me see this,” Sherlock had hissed in his ear, voice odd from the funny teeth prosthetics he was wearing to change the shape of his face.

“You would have anyway,” John whispered back.

“But not like this.”

The whole world was aging around Sherlock who flew to Paris and Houston and Rio and did what he loved but could never stay away for very long. John worried terribly, and so did Sherlock.

 

Sherlock didn’t leave their little cottage anymore, he sat in the living room as regaled John with the details of his experiments laid out on the workbench facing the garden with its for cheerful beehives, The rows of honey jars turned the window seal golden in the morning sun and Sherlock had a habit of randomly taking a jar and sticking his finger in to suck up the honey. He was young and healthy, his hearts beating strong, he could stand the sugar.

He brought John his tea, even when John insisted he could do it himself and helped him out of bed some mornings when he was very stiff. John hobbled around the house, a very small man with a cane with springy white hair and very large glasses he often forgot on the top of his head. Sherlock always patiently reminded him. His mind was still sharp though, sharper than a tack and he could still move faster than one would assume, Slipping in and out of the shadows so he didn’t have to take the long steps down the hall when his leg was acting up. He still got out in the garden, hands down in the dirt, giggling his sweet little giggle while Sherlock swanned around reading posts from his forum.

It was like John knew he was dying when the time came. He hunted every night, and during the day too, a small crumpled mousy figure in his armchair. Snoring soft old man’s snores while his mind zipped as quick as a woodchipper. He hunted a glut, like he was saving up for the winter. Saving up Sherlock. He thought that Sherlock would like for him to leave it be, but he couldn’t.

He couldn’t.

_He couldn’t._

Sherlock was very kind and held John’s small wrinkled hand in his long fingered one as John died. Staring quietly down as him, so young, crying soft tears like bits of glass or ice, like a child’s tears, clean and clear.

He didn’t know what to say to Sherlock. What would be suitable, he was just a dried out old hunting dog, gone soft around the edges. He was John’s best friend, John wanted to be remembered well.

Sherlock long fingers stroked slowly over his forehead, “You’ve done well John. You need to rest now. You need to sleep and stop dreaming.”

“Will you be alright Sherlock?”

Sherlock bowed his head against the duvet, hiding his face. “Go, just go John. Stop worrying, just be at peace.”

His old soft hands, large and calloused for guns and garden shears stroked gently over Sherlock’s thick soft hair. “Don’t cry, please don’t cry.”

“You’re my best friend John. I never had a friend before you.” His voice is so small it could fit in the smallest dip of the bowl John’s cupped palm. A tiny pearl in the cup of his old and calloused hand.

Sherlock buried him in the back garden, beside the bees.

He sat, leaned against a hive and was very quiet.

 

THE END


End file.
